


Devotion Shared Between Souls

by Sun_Spark



Series: Possessive Jarchie (Collection) [5]
Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Angst, Blood and Violence, Brief homophobia, Canonical Character Death, Caring Jughead Jones, Comfort, Dark, Dark Archie Andrews, Dark Jughead Jones, Devoted Archie Andrews, Devotion, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Episode: s01e02 Chapter Two: A Touch of Evil, Established Relationship, Floof, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Grundy - Freeform, Hate Speech, Hurt Archie Andrews, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Love, M/M, Murder, No Sex, No Smut, Non-Graphic Violence, Non-Sexual, Panic Attacks, Past Attempted Rape/Non-Con, Past Child Abuse, Past Underage, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Protective Archie Andrews, Protective Jughead Jones, Reggie Mantle Being an Asshole, Showers, Soul Bond, Symbolism, Trauma, being a jerk, it's referenced and not shown, it's reggie, kind of, see episode 2, so much love, underage and non-con is for her, unholy amounts of love, unrelated to the non-sex, we deal with archie's truama, what a concept
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-01
Updated: 2020-01-01
Packaged: 2021-02-27 05:34:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 23,466
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22071871
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sun_Spark/pseuds/Sun_Spark
Summary: Devotion was a dangerous thing when given to a god; but when it was given with every shred of a being on their knees to the one who held their heart and soul, it became a vengeance inconsolable and unlimited in what it may do in the name of worship.OrArchie is burying the secret of his not-so-willing relationship with Geraldine Grundy from Jughead. It forces them apart for a little bit. Reggie Mantle is a jerk to Jughead, Archie's protective, they're both a bit dark and not quite sane - Violence ensues. Oh! And we actually deal with Archie's trauma and anxiety and PTSD and Jughead is a protective and caring boyfriend who takes care of him.
Relationships: Archie Andrews/Jughead Jones
Series: Possessive Jarchie (Collection) [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1495961
Comments: 9
Kudos: 53





	Devotion Shared Between Souls

It confused Archie, all the different thoughts and emotions swirling through his head as he stared down at the tiny locker memorial the students had set up in the school hallway. Interest and curiosity made their appearances, wonder at who had killed the young man, interest at how he had died, how it seemed to go against the story of a seemingly grief-stricken and inconsolable sister. Numbness to the thought of how he died. Curiosity of why, of all the ways, it had been like that. **If** it had been like that, had been the way it seemed. Grief in its palest shade became a form of mourning in his chest when he considered who had died, the boy who had been kind to him, to his…beloved…He hesitated even to think of the one he belonged to here in the halls, even in the silence of his mind where none should hear. He could remember though, the kindness that fell from Jason Blossom, so unlike the jagged edges of his twin sister, to reach them. From the boy with pale eyes that looked at them with silent understanding, recognition of the thing under their skins, burrowed in their shared souls, their natures entwined deadly and dangerous.

“Hi.” It was a learned game perfected over time to keep his reaction mild, to not let on to those around how his unseeing and staring gaze honed to a sharpened edge in a breath. To turn around only a bit too quickly as his gaze locked on to the one who spoke, vision narrowing until it saw nothing else in the motion around them. He didn’t trust his voice to maintain the careless tenor of teenage youth, didn’t trust his words to showcase only friendship and flippant emotion to this boy, so he stayed silent. The grin that pulled at pale lips and met with the humorous glimmer in dark eyes told him that his thoughts were known, laid bare to the one who looked at him. Those eyes slid from him to look into the hall for a moment, a heart’s beat, until they met his gaze again. 

Dark humor shone clearly through those eyes, and Archie wanted to grin vicious and sharp in response, unknowing what words would fall from pale lips and curling tongue. He didn’t. Dropped his own gaze instead to compose himself, but then that voice spoke again and drew his eyes right back up to its owner. “Do you think I can use Jason Blossom’s death as an excuse to get out of PE?” 

Whiskey and Amber eyes sought out Blue and Grey and Green usually so vibrant currently muted as they always were when anyone else might see, only the tiniest spark of light there, sitting in the still depths for Archie to see. His hands tried to be busy, sorting through the locker he didn’t need open for books he didn’t need and notes he already had memorized, trying to appear normal as his tongue became heavy in his mouth. As words worthy of the one in his presence fled his suddenly quiet mind. Jughead didn’t wait for him though, didn’t expect an answer other than that too open stare.

“ ‘Sorry, Coach, I’m just too depressed and freaked out to do pull-ups right now.’ ” Those eyes searched the hall without interest, dull without anything worthy under their gaze to focus upon as they tracked back to him, to the jacket heavy on his shoulders and up across the throat that felt as if a stone had lodged in it to eyes that couldn’t meet his own. Archie’s eyes flitted across the hall as his mouth opened, as his mind remembered the act he was supposed to play and the lines of improv worn into the pathways of his mind, as he played his part and his tongue formed the words dully and without true feeling. “Don’t joke about Jason Blossom.”

His eyes met those carefully dulled ones evenly, the mask he’d been floundering for firmly back in place for any who dared to look too close. Not enough to fool the one before him though. Those pale lips pulled up in amusement, one brow tilting in humor at his attempts, those eyes boring into his own and past them into his soul as if he couldn’t fool his oldest friend. Maybe he couldn’t. He wished, with the weight of his secret heavy in his throat like a pungent perfume that chased him, choked and suffocated him, that he couldn’t.

“What?” That voice reached him, too quiet, too tender for where they stood. He got the sense that his friend couldn’t bear to meet his eyes without smiling, without failing in his façade and giggling like the school children they weren’t, understood that as those lips kept moving and those eyes fell to the ground so they weren’t resting on him anymore. As that voice rang out too quiet and too light with the humor of boys hiding from their parents and telling jokes. “Sardonic humor is just my way of relating to the world.” 

He composed himself again into the depressed loner outcast everyone saw whenever they deigned to glance at him and his eyes came back up, that grin still there at the corner of his mouth but fought down, composed into an actor’s indifferent frown. It was Archie’s turn to lose his composure, to look away in the next step of their well-rehearsed danced. He scanned the area without any real interest, then looked back up at the other boy, but couldn’t find anything to say. He just pressed his lips together in a not smile and a not frown. He didn’t have to say anything though as Jughead’s eyes were drawn down the hall and real disdain made itself known on his features, those eyes going dead so as not to reveal what lurked behind them as he scoffed.

“Look. It’s the rich kids from _The Goonies_.” He turns to look and his eyes land apathetically on the jocks he acts like he’s friends with before that voice draws his attention back like a beacon. “All right, I’m out.”

Archie watches him go with a watchful gaze and carefully neutral expression that would look concerned if anyone cared to look closer. He watches as Reggie slammed into Jughead with an elbow to his shoulder, too close to the column of his neck. Too close to his throat. “Watch it Wednesday Adams!” The jeer rings down the hall, reaches Archie’s ears as he watches Jughead glare at Reggie as if the jock wasn’t worth his time or the air he breathed and walked away. Archie’s facial expression fell into a blank slate save the parting of his lips to exhale an angry breath. He looked away quickly, deliberately finds something else to focus his eyes and attention on so he doesn’t crack, so their carefully built façade doesn’t come crumbling down. So he doesn’t shove Reggie into a wall and tear that boastful, fragile throat from his neck. He walks away so he doesn’t hold an arrogant, dying asshole against the unyielding column that kept the walls standing and bare his teeth in satisfaction as the blood from his throat rains down on him like unholy retribution.

He doesn’t hear a word from his teacher’s lips as the clock’s hands ticked and count down the minutes of his class. His anger, brutally shoved down into a cage that sits in the pit of his soul, has frozen over, frost coating iron bars and ice meeting burning ire, the two turning to smothering vapor. He tries not to dwell on Jughead or Reggie or Jason Blossom, and he’s successful at dampening the words in his head, but not the emotions in his chest. The silence in his mind turns to an oppressive fog that isolates him from the world and he stares blankly at his notes, out the window, at the blackboard, not seeing the words or the clouds or the diagrams. He hears the bell like a shot through silence and gathers his things and returns to his locker, some distant part of his mind voicing thanks that none of his peers try to stop him, try to speak with him. He switches notebooks he didn’t use for others he isn’t likely to see any clearer than their predecessors, he could go to class now, has no reason to stand where he is, and yet he doesn’t move. The movement around him is a blur of color where nothing stands out, the chattering of voices a cacophony he can’t begin to translate because it no longer sounds like words to his ears. Nothing comes into focus until the halls are empty and echoing footsteps draw his gaze to a familiar form.

It terrifies him in a way he never thought the sight of his oldest friend could. Strikes dread into the center of his rotten heart when Jughead finds him in the fleeting moments between their classes as the hands on the clock tick ever onward at a demanding, threatening pace, the hallway they stand in long since empty of even the slowest stragglers. “ ** _Archie._** ” The call of his name could be likened to a gunshot, but bullet wounds pass quickly, and this isn’t quick, hits far more like the sharp lash of a whip dragging vicious and slow across already raw skin.

He’ll be late to class if he doesn’t move but such things are of no concern, barely register in the realm of his reality as he stares into intelligent grey eyes that have always seen more than they should, that have always held knowledge no human should know locked behind ebbing blues and greens. Those eyes pin him to his place in complete surrender, nearly freeze his lungs as he is swept up, enthralled, and overwhelmed by their piercing gaze. Raven colored locks fall over pale features as the boy before him cocks his head to the side, the movement sharp and almost violent, as he tilts his head in a mockery of puppy-like innocence and curiosity. 

“Weirdest thing.” He does not speak without care as to who hears, but he knows as well as Archie that these halls that now reverberate with his voice, with the voice of ancient beings striking reverence into mortal fools, are empty, that only Archie will hear these words meant for his ears. “This summer, we were supposed to take a road trip over July Fourth weekend, which you bailed on last minute.”

Every word is a finely-honed edge slicing into Archie like knives bearing his name, blades forged only with the purpose of sinking through his skin and piercing his blackened core. They fill him with fear, pin him to the ground beneath him as grey eyes flash with artic storms and ice seeps along the space between them, encompasses Archie like cloying fog, freezes through his brittle bones and curls icicle claws into the core of his being.

Jughead’s too clever eyes flash with dangerous light as they bore into his own surely gone wide in panic. The words fall from pale lips, a final judgment passed down from the throne to the executioner’s blade. Death held no fear for Archie, but this boy’s savage, precision-wrought _knowing_ turning slowly to fury strikes a fear so terrible in Archie’s soul that the word ‘terror’ is a mere plaything.

“Is there something you wanna tell me, pal?”

The bell rings its final warning, punctuates the last word from Jughead’s lips, and Archie uses it as an excuse to flee. He hides behind an institution and the minor threat of punishment for deviating from the designated schedule, hides because he’s a coward and his heart is gripped in the frozen embrace of something worse than terror in the face of Jughead’s knowing gaze.

-

He goes through his day in numbness. Surprises himself when actual pain twists in his gut as the announcement of Jason Blossom’s death being ruled a murder rings over the ancient pa system and bounces off the cracked walls of their school. Tries to muster some form of surprise or a half convincing imitation of the shock and gasps and mournful faces of his chattering schoolmates. It’s ridiculous though, and he can’t help but scoff to himself as he observes them without real care, that he should have to mimic their fake emotions and theatrical tears and wailing gossip that rang hollow without any truth behind it. All of it so _fake._ But if he didn’t react in a similar manner, they would single him out, cry out in accusation with misplaced and fake dramatic anger that he ‘didn’t care’. He probably cared more than most of them, and even then, he lacked the shock that filled them.  


He does cobble together some sincerity when he talks to Cheryl, when he expresses his regret that Jason’s life was cut short, when he offers a shoulder to cry on if she should need it. He feels that sincerity shrivel up in his chest as she responds in dramatics and showboating, stabbing the scalpel down without precision or care to prove a point. Can’t help but think that the bright and dark spot of Jason didn’t deserve to be saddled with only this to mourn for him.

He tolerates the buzzing of his friends at the lunch table where he’d hoped to be left alone, because they are his friends, Betty and Kevin. But Betty isn’t as she claimed. She isn’t fine, and she isn’t able to be around him, to listen to him or share his space without pain, and he doesn’t know how to help her. He doesn’t know how to tell her that he loves her, but he can never **_love_** her, because his heart is a flimsy thing but it isn’t fickle, and it can never be hers because his soul already belongs to another, bent under the weight of devotion that would pale in comparison if he tried to love her with its mockery.

He doesn’t tolerate this other one so well, patience and calm nearly breaking over the jagged edge of her. Kevin is so different from him, but his dark and kind eyes light with acceptance. He doesn’t see the darkness beneath the golden-boy skin Archie wears so well, but he knows something is there, doesn’t understand or begin to comprehend it, but accepts it. He doesn’t push when the sharp edges poke through the halo Archie hides behind. This new girl isn’t like Kevin. She shoves her way into their group without a care, flaunting expensive clothes and handing out gifts she’d had brought to her from out of state in order to buy flimsy friendship without a care. She sits there in a space that should be filled by dark hair shorter than hers and pale skin not covered by makeup but dusted in darks stars, a space that hasn’t been occupied in months because of other issues, because of the façade they bend to. She fills it now as if she owns it and commands him ‘act’ with a voice meant to be seductive, but the crown sits uneven on her head, doesn’t belong to her, and the arrogance to command anything of him makes him bristle. Makes spines unseen to them raise along his spine, urges his lips to curl and bare canines that are too short and dull to fit comfortably in his mouth. She demands a song from him. He isn’t talented in words, cannot weave them into mesmerizing tapestries that rival the galaxies like his Beloved can, but in songs they may bend to his voice at least a little bit, molding into shape to form a picture unskilled but filled with the essence his heart. These words are not for her, not for any of them, should only be heard by one pair ears, and he wants to curse her instead of give them to her, but she says ‘please’ and looks to the friends who sit uneasily with urgency in her eyes, the first real thing she’s shown. So he acquiesces. It’s a mistake. He knew it would be, and Betty’s tears aren’t what he wanted, but he cannot fix that no matter how hard, how earnestly, he tries, because his devotion belongs to another.

Weatherbee pulls him away and he’s a coward. He knows that. But he can’t say what he wants, can’t figure out how to make his words come out properly. So he says nothing, mutters some variation of ‘No Sir’ and walks away. He walks straight to her. He doesn’t waste time, walks in and says “Weatherbee just asked me if I knew anything about Jason.” He doesn’t know quite why he says it that way…That’s a lie. The Golden Boy, the part of him that commits to the role, the childlike part of him that hadn’t been able to open his mouth and say what he’d wanted to his Principle, doesn’t know. But deeper, darker parts of him know exactly why, knows he’s hoping to scare her into ending what he can’t figure out how to. It doesn’t work.

He wants to curse, wants to raise his hands against something, he wants to scream. But it’s strangled in his throat along with his courage and his anger when she says “I’m putting myself in your hands.” Reminds him so indelicately that he’s in her hands, reminds him with clever prose that he’s a fly in her web. _“You’re in my hands Archie Andrews, what a precarious place to be.”_ She’d said it with a giggle in the middle of the night, said it like a schoolgirl flirting with her crush, but it had been a threat, and the words themselves, the hand at his throat where only one person should ever be, and the dangerous eyes that met his in a mockery of care made it clear that it was a threat. That hand at his chin now was an echo, a reminder as clear as the words spoken. 

He ran, again, ever the coward, unable to stand up for himself. The darkness under his skin shriveling in the face of this malicious thing even his mind couldn’t have fathomed, taking over him like the stories only superstitious pirates of old told tales of, leaving him choking in its wake. If only it was a storm at sea…he would rather choke on the seawater that killed him than the vile sickness this _thing_ of hers poured down his throat. He cowered under the weight of it, a child before a monster he couldn’t fight, and it brought him to his knees. He didn’t go quietly, hatred barreling up his throat to form a snarl as his knees hit the ground, he should only kneel before one thing and this woman was not it, but he could not fight her. 

He wonders why the weight of this sickness bears heavier on him today than it has for the weeks past. Doesn’t realize the weight of another set of eyes from where he kneels, bent under the weight of her gaze.

-

The day passes and he doesn’t remember a thing, only a blur of colors and sounds and scents and sensations that don’t fully reach his mind as he tries not to wilt and die from the poison once again injected into his veins, into his heart, into his soul.

He doesn’t see Jughead again that day, and that isn’t unusual, but it bears a new weight today that he doesn’t understand as it spears through his core, he winces as he feels it and he doesn’t understand it. He moves on, because he cannot just shut down and stand there like a statue, no matter how much he wants to stop existing, to stop the thoughts whirling through his mind like shrapnel in a hurricane.

He hides the weight in his chest and the darkness so unlike his own that it’s foreign and creeping in his mind like an infection, hides it all from his father. From the kindest man he knows. He knows by the heavy eyes that follow him that he isn’t successful, knows by the lines growing ever deeper in his father’s expression that it isn’t hidden as well as he’d hoped. He wonders how much the man knows, how much he…recognizes. He doesn’t know about the woman, would have…what would he have done? Curious thoughts stir in Archie’s mind as he walks along towards the diner at his father’s behest, the one spot of brightness in this accursed town. Would his father have destroyed something? Destroyed…her? It seems ridiculous but sometimes…sometimes Archie thinks he sees recognition in his father’s eyes. Memories of older times, of Jughead’s father and his own together stir recognition in his own chest and he feels as if he’s seeing a reflection of himself, of Jughead, of the bond between them. No. His father doesn’t know about _her_ , but he knows, even if he no longer acknowledges his recognition, he knows the darkness beneath his son’s skin.

He stops his musing as he collects the food his father ordered, and he wishes to no particular thing nor being that the girl from earlier wasn’t there. He wants to sneer in petulance, bare his teeth in animalistic warning so she would take a hint, but his father raised him better than that. So he plays the part of the ‘Golden Boy’, walks with her and makes conversation politely, tries to give her advice without choking on the aura of her perfume. Eventually, he gets away from her. Eventually, he gets home, but it’s not he solace he was hoping for.

Jughead’s sitting on his front step, and for a moment his rotten heart pulls free of the chains of the poison that have held it down, for a second it soars upward in hope he hadn’t felt in what felt like years but had only been hours. Then he sees it, the way his closest friend is sitting, the way he slumps forward, the expression on his face. It’s pain that makes him want to rush forward, but there’s an edge to it as those eyes look up to find him, a bottomlessness that sinks through Archie’s skin and into his gut. Disappointment. It’s not something he was used to seeing on pale features, not turned towards him, but lately it feels like it’s all he sees, worse it feels like what he deserves after how badly he’s screwed up. After what he’s done.

“Jug?” His voice is tentative, more unsure than it has been around this boy since they were young children. It feels out of place, sounds it too, but he feels like a child then, a child drowning in something he cannot name. “What’s up?” He hopes to the only thing his broken soul bows to in devotion that it’s only disappointment and not disgust marring pale features gone dark with shadows.

The raven boy stands up and walks down the steps towards him, and Jughead may be shorter than him, but Archie had never felt so small, not even when **_she_** …

“What’s up is I saw you Archie.” What heart he has is gone, now an abyss in his chest where poison gathered into sickening pain. He feels like a child and Jughead speaks as if he were one, as if he needed an explanation. “In the music room. With Ms. Grundy.” They’re face to face but they feel galaxies apart because this boy had never felt so closed off to him before. Shadows move in the window and another kind of panic gather’s him in its brutal grip, pushes him to take a step forward. “Keep your voice down, my Dad’s inside.”

It was the wrong thing to say, but it was the only thing that muddled its way through the rushing and deafening panic and pain surging up from his stomach and nonexistent heart to fill his head. He knows it was the wrong thing to say as his friend steps closer, head titled and painful sharpness in his eyes, pale throat covered by a tilted chin in a way it never was, not to him. “I’m trying to help you _**dude.**_ ”

It hurts, the admonishment and the impersonal nickname. Fills him with something that he can’t name. Can’t name because it chokes him and he’s drowning in it, his world narrowing down to the boy in front of him and monsters looming over him with poison claws shoved down his throat and in his chest. 

“I’m trying to be your **_friend_**. Even though we’re not anymore.” That hurts worse, makes the world tilt on its axis, and he feels like he can’t breathe because those words, what they meant... ** _‘We’re not anymore.’_** Not. Not…Nothing. Not ‘friends’. Not brothers. Not part of each other. Not… “How long? You and Grundy.” The words break through the storm in his head and he knows he has to answer, and he can’t stop the break in his voice. 

“Since the Summer.” It’s practically a whisper, but the reaction it brings is sharper than a whip breaking across his cheek. Jughead looks at him and he’s never looked at him like that, with betrayal in his eyes and disbelief in his features. “So I’m guessing she’s the reason you’ve been acting weird since summer?” All the words he didn’t say: ‘Why you’ve been distant’ ‘Why you’ve been skittish’ ‘Why you can’t look me in the eye for more than a few seconds’ ‘Why you weren’t there’ – They fill Archie’s mind like the stones being added to press him until his death. 

He can barely whisper the words, but he owes that much, owes the boy before him, so he forces them past his lips. “One of them…” The weight of pain unsaid won’t form into words, won’t pass the vice of his vocal cords, won’t leave his lips and fill the air. He doesn’t know how to make it. He doesn’t know what to do as Jughead lets the betrayal play clearly over his features either, voice going higher in shocked disbelief. “There’s more?”

“We…We were there on the 4th. At the river.” The words feel like sickness crawling up his throat, like bile and rotten filth forcing itself past the noose around his neck while he choked it up. “We heard the gunshot…” Fragmented sentences that sound whole enough they slip past the notice of the raven before him. 

“You have to tell someone!” Too loud, too loose, too frantic. The words reach his ears and stir the embers of panic into the inferno they’d been only moments ago. “I can’t!” He wants to say more, but he can’t form the words and Jughead isn’t giving him the time to. “A kid is dead Archie! And you’re worried about some cougar you’ve fallen for!”

“It’s not like that!” He needs to tell him, needs him to understand. Needs him to know that he doesn’t care about her, that he doesn’t want this, that he never wanted any of this. The words won’t come, they won’t come fast enough. “Stab in the dark: She’s the one telling you not to say anything.” Jughead’s hands are up now, and Archie thinks for a moment that those hands that have never hurt him are going to strike at him, are going to leave bruises that pale in comparison to the weight of the other’s disappointment. He’d deserve them, but he knows he’d break beneath them. “I saw you together. She’s messing with you man!” 

“You don’t know about it Jughead!” Wrong. These words were wrong. They were truthful, this boy didn’t know what was going on, he didn’t know the weight of poison that had destroyed Archie over the past weeks. But they were wrong, they didn’t translate the way he wanted, they fell the wrong way on pale ears hidden by raven hair, they made storm-colored eyes meet dying amber with a vicious light that had never been placed on him before.

“No. But I used to know this guy once. Archie Andrews. He wasn’t perfect but…” Those eyes gone grey looked away from him and it felt like a knife to his heart digging ever deeper as the tension grew, as he waited for his heart to speak. They found him again and he couldn’t even muster the wish that they would look away, could never wish that those eyes turned away from him, no matter how much they hurt. “He always tried to do the right thing at least.”

Anger. Betrayal. Disappointment. Disgust. Complete and utter nothingness. They rain down from Jughead’s voice, down until they lodge into Archie’s soul. It breaks him. He’d held together by this boy’s strength and his own desperation while **_her_** poison broke him apart, now he shattered, and the fragments dulled from starlight into dust. 

He wanted to fall to his knees, wanted his brokenness to become action to be seen by the only eyes that truly mattered to him. But he was frozen as he shattered. He wanted to look up at this bright being of stardust and ethereal darkness and otherworldly light who let him exist in his presence and he wanted to tell him. He wanted to form the words to express the poison that had seeped into his heart and cut into his soul, wanted to weave words until they showed the tangled entrapment surrounding him built from a voice too soft and full of sickness. Wanted to lay his soul bare and fall apart, wanted to let the one who had held him together see where another had reached into his soul and shattered him.

He wanted to cry, to scream, to let this sickness spill out in all its wretchedness. He wanted to sing, to weave words into imperfect art that reached the stars with the weight of his love, his devotion. He wanted…he wanted to break and be seen…but poisoned, sugar-coated threats from a voice that should never have whispered in his ear and the weight of disappointment and betrayal from deadened blue-grey eyes that had never looked at him like this froze his voice and paralyzed his lungs. 

Jughead went to walk away and he grasped at his arm desperately, a clumsy movement from a sluggish mind and the fractured body of a broken boy. “Jug…” He didn’t know what to say under the weight of those eyes, those eyes that now bored into his like needles in his skin, he stared back despite the pain, searching for recognition he didn’t see. “What?” Breathless and harsh, almost spat out. Archie didn’t have an answer, he had so much he wanted to say, but he didn’t have time to figure it out as his father’s form filled the doorway and graced the steps, an older set of amber eyes falling on them with a knowingness that they shouldn’t hold.

“Hey, Jug. Coming in? We got take-out from Pop’s.” His father always ordered extra, just incase Jughead stopped by, just in case his father… even Fred didn’t dwell on thoughts of that outside the cold lonely nights. 

He couldn’t do this. Not here. Not in front of his father. Couldn’t risk him discovering, well, any of it. The thing lurking under his skin; the poison hooks flooding his soul; the bond he had…used to have, to this boy staring at him like he was a stranger; **_her_**. So he forced out the only words he could, praying he didn’t wilt and fade away under that storm-gone-still gaze. “He was just leaving.” The words ring hollow and empty, as if they barely existed, but they land like a blow all the same, he could see that in his best friend’s eyes as the last of the shutters slammed and storms turned to dead grey.

Jughead leaves, takes his only reason for breathing with him as he goes. His anger and disappointment stay behind, a cloak of ice wrapped around a cold and lonely boy. His father doesn’t ask, just follows his numb movements with dull amber eyes that warm when they land on him but haven’t really lit up in years, not since FP and he had fallen out. He doesn’t ask, only watches with too much knowledge, too much understanding and yet none at all in his eyes. The food tastes like nothing to his dull tongue but he goes through the motions of eating, hopes he won’t choke it all up later. 

Eventually he says his goodnights and goes up to his bed, curls up under the covers that seem to strangle him and shivers in the cold and empty darkness. He doesn’t sleep, merely exists in that paralyzing place between sleep and wakefulness, it isn’t sleep but he has nightmares all the same. Grey eyes gone so dull they’re chipped from decaying stone haunt him with the weight of their lifelessness, normally endless sources of emotion and thought, windows that held stories and opened up into the never-ending abyss of the cosmos and possibility, suddenly closed to him. Empty. Even absent they pierce his soul, and they’re joined by hands that don’t belong to the same being. Cold hands too delicate and punishing, unrelenting ghost across his skin, matched by lips sharp as thorns catching on his own and pouring poison down his throat, reminding him of memories like phantoms of trying to cover his throat because it’s not for her. Not for anyone else. He drowns in the panic and the pain, in the oceans of tears he won’t cry and remorse for the heart he tore to shreds locked behind grey eyes.

-

He doesn’t see Jughead again until the next day, doesn’t really run into anyone at all who commands his attention in the passing day. Teachers barely hold his attention, for the most part they don’t at all. Betty doesn’t talk to him, still upset, he couldn’t change that though. Even in his current state, he had nothing but brokenness to give her, and he couldn’t hand her a heart that didn’t belong to him anymore, hadn’t for years. Veronica seems to have made up with her, thankfully, and Archie knows future trouble will follow that pair, but for today he’s only grateful that her predatory but inexperienced eyes aren’t set on him.

His day is numbness and apathy he can barely hide behind his Golden Boy Façade crumbling around him, and he wonders if he’ll make it through the day as he heads for the student lounge. He wants to hide on the bleachers by the unused track, but he knows he’ll fall apart and lose his mask if he goes there, so to the lounge, and the vulture students who will force him to keep his mask in place, it is.

“And Sheriff Keller’s grilling me, Mantle the Magnificent. ‘Cause I’d want Blossom dead.” He almost turns around as the voice reaches him, but it’s old routine by now. Reggie boasts from a foolish tongue to make himself feel important, and the jocks around him and the cheerleaders they hang on their arms like interchangeable ornaments nod along like bobble-headed toys, an attentive audience paying their dues to the figurehead they flock to. It makes Archie sick, and for a moment he’s surprised at the level of animosity that settles amidst the feeling of nothingness in his gut. These fools wouldn’t know devotion or worship if given directions and approach by deity incarnate, wouldn’t know how to fall to their knees and bare their souls. They could act like it, but the truth was just that: It was all an act. They bared nothing, risked nothing in their devotion, their callous worship that set their place in the tiny food chain of high school. They didn’t know devotion that left them on their knees without a thought, staring up at the thing that held their souls and baring their being to it, the worship that held the risk of the one they turned to destroying the hearts they’d bared. They were actors on a stage who’d never read their part, and it filled him with disdain.

Sickness, though, that came from Reggie, the one who sat like a supposed Olympic hero from the days of old to bask in their praises. He thought of himself like one: A champion of old, a demigod with holiness running through his veins. Thought he deserved devotion and worship. Archie knew one who deserved devotion, and it was not holiness burrowed in his soul. Reggie Mantle was an arrogant fool, boastful and never-ending in the arrogance that filled the space where his brain should be, he expected everyone to bow to him, including Archie. But Archie did not bow to the likes of him, bowed to one, sick as it was. This sickness though, could not be safely expressed, so he pushed it down with indifference, forced himself to walk through them as if he had not a care, gazing down at a blank phone screen. He feels the eyes of Chuck Clayton, of vermin, on his skin, but they slide away as he passes, land back on Reggie as he blunders on.

“When he was like the only good quarterback we had.” ‘Quarterback’, as if that was all the teen’s life had meant. Apathy lived in the cage of Archie’s ribs and flowed like numbing venom through his veins, but even he could feel a loss greater than football trophies with the boy’s death. “And speaking of offensive tight ends,” Like that made any sense, why did people listen to him? “I should’ve sent the cops to you Moose.” Numbness and ice, what was the difference? He might have said there wasn’t one, yet he felt ice chase through his veins, sharper then numbness, as the attention in the room shifted to Moose. _’Not him. Of all of you, not him.’_ “What exactly where you and Kevin doing down at the river, huh?” 

Moose was the only one of the jocks Archie liked, and even then it was barely more than disinterest. But he knew the boy well enough to know he was in the closet, to know how he felt for Kevin. To know that he was too innocent, naïve, to be subjected to Reggie’s hateful rhetoric. “Or does being with the Sheriff’s son give you a free pass? Keller?” Reggie never stopped talking, did he? But the attention was split now, between Moose and the far more formidable Kevin. He didn’t even hear the response, too caught up in his own voice. 

Archie couldn’t pretend to care anymore, hadn’t been maintaining a façade of interest at all to watching eyes if he was honest. He stopped listening, turned inward to the empty cold inside that howled like dark wind through desert peaks: Lifeless, cold, lonely, desolate. It isn’t moping, not exactly, not self-pity either, those things require that one whine and complain and make excuses for how they felt. No. This was akin to acceptance, but not peace. This was felt like laying down in the cold sands in the darkness between the towering peaks, uncaring but not unfeeling to of the sharpness of the sands pelting his skin at the whim of the endless, whipping wind. 

Distantly he hears Reggie claim that a jock wouldn’t have killed Jason, as if jealousy and testosterone-fueled idiocy wouldn’t be more than enough reason, hadn’t been in other murders they wouldn’t know the first thing about. Only focusses on trying to get a drink from the machine that never works, tries not to focus on the raven perched just at his side, close enough to touch but so frigid he wouldn’t dare try. He ignores the drivel, but he does hear it when those words begin to form insulting sounds into hateful words he’s heard a thousand times before, forced himself not to react to a thousand more: “Let’s be honest. Isn’t it always some spooky, scrawny, pathetic internet troll too busy writing his manifestos to get laid?”

Grey eyes fall across him and he pretends he isn’t breaking, pretends for the crowd that never stops gawking, pretends for them because he would have fallen to his knees by now if it was just the two of them. Those eyes that try so hard to be apathetic to him, to the one thing they had never looked on without care, land on his hands, and Archie knows. He can feel the weight of them, the wish to take the crumpled bill from his hands and smooth it out, to put it through the machine and do it for him because the raven-haired boy could, because he could do that to take care of the redhead he’d always taken care of simply because he _could_ . He could feel the weight of forced apathy and all too real pain and the presence of a dozen people that stops them both.

“Some smug, moody, serial killer fanboy freak,” He meets those eyes because he cannot command himself not to. They meet his gaze and he tries not to give it all away at the sight of betrayal and curiosity and infinite care now shrouded in pain in the depths of those eyes. He’d bare it all to the world if it would fix things, but that would only mess it up all the more, so he doesn’t do a thing.

“Like Jughead?”

Those damn words and that name that should never leave Reggie Mantle’s lips set a flame down Archie’s spine. Anger’s the first thing he’s felt that isn’t pain, isn’t numbness, isn’t poison in nearly a day. It feels like baptism, but he doesn’t let it consume him. He never can. 

Grey eyes leave him to meet the boring depths of blackened brown in an even stare, disinterest pouring off every line of a relaxed body in a manner cats couldn’t dream of. 

“What was it like Suicide Squad? When you shot Jason?” Damn him. His teeth ground together, but he didn’t let it show, didn’t turn around and bare them, didn’t invite that boy closer so he could sink them into his jugular and _rip_. “You didn’t do stuff to the body, did you? Like…after?” The calmness of the raven beside him didn’t belong to him, not anymore, yet it was the only thing that kept him from losing his mask, from becoming the real killer in the room.

“It’s called necrophilia, Reggie, can you spell it?” He would smile if his mask wasn’t in place, could feel it pull at his lips all the same as pride filled his hollowed chest. Words were helpless as he was in Jughead’s vice, and they bent for him, sang whatever tone he wished, lashed out and laid waste where he commanded, never, ever leaving him tongue-tied.

Reggie vaults over the couch’s side table with an angrily spat “Come here you little…” And Jughead stands straight to meet him, unafraid, but Archie cannot stop himself anymore. He can’t hold in the fire that’s been steadily growing in his core, the flames licking his veins and setting the echo of a nonexistent heartbeat thundering across his ribs. He knows Jughead’s eyes follow him in surprise, but he cannot help himself anymore, will be lucky if he doesn’t tear this boy to shreds.

Reggie’s taller than him, but that doesn’t matter as Archie steps into his path, steps between the loud-mouth reject from Olympus and the boy who holds the cosmos, as he shoves him back, away from them. “Shut the hell up Reggie.” He doesn’t have to force these words up, not like all the others he’s uttered since last night, but he has to reign them in, has to make them come out even. Has to stop fury from tangling around them like clinging vines.

Veronica tries to interrupt, as if her infamy and old status makes her the queen of anything here, give her the authority to command the jester and the scarred soldier. It’s laughable. These boys may bow to Cheryl Blossom when it suited them, but Archie had never bowed to her and he wouldn’t bow to this girl here.

“What do you care Andrews?”

The words ring through his head, like thundering wind suddenly a sandstorm in the smoldering desert. _**Everything.**_ It nearly slips from his lips, the gateway to never-ending words of fealty, of devotion pure in its imprisoning embrace, of worship human words could not voice. He struggles to pull his mask up, to appear the apathetic teenager he’s supposed to be. He knows he fails at least for a moment because he cannot help but glance back at Jughead as he answers, amber meeting searching grey as the words false and hollow ring out “ _Nothing._ Just leave him alone.”

It’s growing again, the urge, the itch under his skin to tear Reggie apart, to rend flesh and let the blood run black as it dries.

“Holy crap.” Laughter and mockery drip from Reggie’s foul tongue, and he wants, god he wants to tear it from his mouth so it can never utter another word against Jughead. Rage simmers up hot until it goes cold as careless hands point to the Raven-haired boy by his side, as jeering eyes and lips twisted in a mocking smile bore into him. As a heathen tongue curls around words about the only one Archie would bow to, would die for. “Did you and Danny Darko kill him together?”

They should be better at this, better at hiding it after all these years of sheltering their twisted souls from seeking eyes, but he knows they’re not, not today. He doesn’t have to look, doesn’t have to see more than the blur in his peripheral vision to know that Jughead is staring at Reggie in shock, shock at how stupid he could be. He doesn’t have to look, but he can’t help himself as he searches desperately for something, anything to keep himself in check. 

“Was it some kind of pervy, blood brother thing?” Reggie’s in his space now, and he can’t help it, can’t stop it. ‘blood brother thing’. Like that could describe the tiniest bit of the bond they’d shared, the flayed thing laid out in shreds between them now. He doesn’t know what it is that does it, that makes him lose his tenuous control. If it’s the insulting names or the unworthy eyes and hands and voice that hold themselves above Jughead. He doesn’t know if it’s the accusation or the insults, or if it’s the mockery of their bond, but Reggie’s stumbling back and Archie’s suddenly hitting cracking glass. He hears Jughead’s voice, a shout without form, always does no matter the noise surrounding him, and it breaks him from the haze of the darkness marring his gaze from inside. But then, as if the boy had snapped his fingers, the fire is fading again and his strength goes with it. He’s on his back, ferocity forgotten in the aftermath of rage, and Reggie’s on top of him and Jughead, ‘not his friend anymore’ Jughead is trying to pull the oversized jock off of him, but other mindless sheep are stopping him. He wants to get up, wants to remove their hands from the raven-haired boy, but he can’t, because Jughead’s cry sapped the strength from his body and he’s helpless now to the onslaught of a fool.

He doesn’t understand how they didn’t get in trouble, but somehow, they don’t. People are cheering one moment and pulling them apart the next, shoving them on their way to class. He wants to get to Jughead, but the masses have decided that they do not belong together and the darker boy is gone, shuffled away and shoved to the side while he is pushed away from Reggie and down the hall, the taller boy pushed off in the opposite direction. He doesn’t find the boy throughout the remainder of the day and he’s home before he knows what’s happened, an ice pack pressed to a swollen eye.

His father’s in front of him then, that odd look parents get when they’re concerned and caught halfway between tender care and reprimand hovering in his eyes. “Hate to ask this, but did you get in a fight with Jughead?” He asks it like he knows the answer, knows the truth no matter how Archie got his black eye. It almost makes him want to laugh at the same time it makes him want to cry because yes, he did, but then he got a black eye because his devotion couldn’t be silenced by pain and _‘used to know’_. 

“No. It was with Reggie.” It’s the most honest answer he can give right now. He knows it’s not enough, so his eyes trace the wood grain of the counter he’s sat at while his tongue tries to form the words that haven’t been willing to come out for days, weeks now. “Jughead and I…were disagreeing about a girl.” Truth more misleading than a lie. “But it’s not about Jug and me,” Lie. As if his world did not revolve around his best friend hadn’t since he was a child. “It’s about me and this girl.” Truth ironclad as the chains binding him. How is he supposed to say this? Tell his father what’s wrong when he couldn’t tell Jughead? Tell him the poison in his veins without spewing it out for the world to see? Tell him the truth without honeyed threats becoming reality? “I…There’s something I think we should do, and it’s the right thing…but this girl…she says doing it will…” He wants to be sick. “Will ruin what we have.” 

_‘What we have.’_ Like this was a normal girlfriend that most boys had at some point during high school. Like his soul wasn’t held captive by another. Like it wasn’t a nightmare of endless horror. 

“This is the most honest talk we’ve had in a while,” He wishes it wasn’t. Wishes it were more honest than it was. “and I’m glad you want to do the right thing, I can see that, even under the shiner.” 

The right thing? Was baring his soul in devotion to a boy hiding a strangeness not unlike his own ‘right’? Were the wishes of skin and tearing and blood in retribution for insolence and pitiful spite ‘right’? Was telling about the gunshot, heedless of the painful consequences that hung over his neck like the executioner’s blade ‘right’? Were these wants of his ‘right’? For a fleeting moment of childish youth he wishes he could ask his father these things, the way a small child could ask any curiosity without raising alarm beyond ‘where’d you hear that?’.

“Archie, if you know it’s the right thing to do, even though it’s tough, even though it might…It might cost you,” Those eyes had never worn the weight of understanding that made Archie question if his father shared his oddity more than they did now, had never been heavy with the weight of past choices and the pain they’d caused, to him and his closest companion, like they were now. “You gotta do it.”

He nodded his head, agreed with what his father was saying, but he didn’t know if he could. He didn’t know the right and the wrong of his father’s past, but he knew the cost: FP. His oldest friend, dearest friend. Archie didn’t know if he could bear the weight of such a price, but… there was one thing he could do, could twist the words enough to hide the truth and prevent the realization of poisoned words. He could tell them about the gunshot, that he was there, a risk to himself and no one else.

-

He’d never liked pep rallies, but then he wasn’t sure any student truly liked them, even the primadonnas who got to preen in the limelight. He wished there was less light here now as he approached her. He kept the length of the table between them and choked back the sickness that climbed his throat. How had he ever found this woman kind, thought her inviting or motherly? He wanted to throw up at the thought of it. It was all he could do to hide the tremors running through his body. 

“I’m gonna come clean to Weatherbee and Keller.” He wishes he could give her more of a reason for the sudden panic on her features, but he knows not to push her, knows the consequences. He won’t be deterred though, in this he’s made up his mind, and her voice dripping innocence and sugar and desperation as it uttered his name in the wrong tenor wouldn’t stop him. “I’m going to do it tomorrow. If you want to be there, we’ll figure that out, if not, I’ll do the best I can to keep you out of it, but I’m telling them about me.”

She doesn’t answer and he’s grateful that that voice isn’t piercing his ears. Threats and admonishments like tender words don’t come, it’s almost acceptance, and he’s grateful for the lack of action, the lack of words. Weight settles on him and he knows it, knows the feeling of it, has for years. A grey gaze draws his eyes away, calls to him like a siren’s song beckoning to either his home or his destruction, and he would gladly, knowingly, take either one so long as the owner of those grey eyes was the one to give it to him. 

He walks away and wishes that it felt better than this hollowness to have gotten the last word, to have the barest spark of power in this struggle that had long since turned into silent and pained acceptance. He walks straight towards those eyes, walks uncaring of the world around him, of any responsibility he may have or any voice that calls his name until he’s standing in front of a raven-haired boy next to the bleachers, wishing they were under them in a different time. That boy turns towards him, fairy lights rigged to the metal bleachers lighting grey eyes that have the barest hints of blue swirling in their depths.

“Girl trouble? You?” It’s said lightly, hiding the truth behind it, the truth of what they were, had been, of what Archie had destroyed in foolish vulnerability. He doesn’t know what to say, but he needs at least some of the disappointment marring his best friend’s being to fade, so he says the only thing he can think of without meeting blue-grey eyes. “I’m telling Weatherbee tomorrow. I don’t know what she’ll do, but I can tell them what I heard.”

Surprise and something, something close to approval lights pale features as Jughead looks at him, eyes searching him. He wishes they would find what they were looking for, wishes his flaws and failures didn’t cause his oldest friend pain. His throat’s in a stranglehold but he can’t keep going without saying _**something**_ , but here isn’t the place with all these ears, and now isn’t the time with so little time before this accursed rally starts. “What I said, Jug, I didn’t mean it the way it sounded.” A brow raises at him, accusatory and unimpressed but curious. His voice breaks in a choked off throat. “I… There’s…so much I want to say, need to tell you… but I don’t know how and I..” He trails off as Jughead looks to the ground, looks back up to him with concern and care and a curiosity that betrays hurt. The air horn sounds and he knows he only has three minutes to be in place and that’s not long enough. “There isn’t enough time now, Jug, and I don’t know how what to say…”

Grey eyes flecked in swirls of blue peer at him from depths narrowed searchingly rather than in animosity and he hopes for things he can’t find the words to say. Jughead tosses his head to the side, towards the other football players where Archie is supposed to be right now. “Go.” His voice comes out soft, betrays the care he probably wished to carve out of his aching heart. “We’ll figure it out later.” It’s the most beautiful reassurance and it falls to Archie like stardust in an empty sky, hope granted by the boy who held the cosmos of his soul between his hands.

He leaves with the smallest smile on his lips, but it’s the first to pull at his features in the hours since his best friend had walked away from him with anger and hurt in his heart.

The pep rally is…not a complete disaster? Archie hates all of it, entirely. The music is over the top and…oddly sexual for a high school pep rally filled with minors and their parents? The cheerleaders don’t help the matter, and he knows he’s supposed to be attracted to them like a normal boy, but he can never help but wonder how exactly scantily clad minors dancing on the sidelines of sports games and in pep rallies became a normal and okay thing? Cheryl is dramatic to say the least, odd in her mourning…but then he wishes he hadn’t noticed that, because her eyes meet his and he knows she’s seeing a ghost when she runs. Betty and Veronica run after her as the players finish their pointless run around the field. It’s raining and cold and he doesn’t know why he’s there, but his mind won’t leave the raven-haired boy whose small smile had given him the first breathe of air he’d known in two days.

It ends and they file back to the locker room, some of them change quickly, others take the time to shower. He falls in with the latter group but he waits until the others are finished before he steps under the spray, not in the mood for their typical show-posturing and jeering tonight, much less some of the comments he might garner. He stands under the water solely for the sake of warming his cold skin from the rain and it results in the emptiness of the lockers, the field, the bleachers, and the school by the time he’s finished. 

He’s not in a particular hurry, the rain’s let up to a drizzle and the dark green henley he’d slipped on with his dark jeans kept him warm enough in the brisk night. He had nowhere to be, no obligations to peers or social pressures, to his father or friends, nothing to bind him that night and he let himself find peace in the calm of the night. Jughead filled his mind and he huffed a laugh that filled the air with white mist, he knew nothing would come of it tonight, not so soon, but the gentle admonishment and careful reassurance of ‘We’ll figure it out later’ had eased the pain that had been clawing through his soul. It wasn’t a promise of a fix, but Jughead did not waste words, did not often say what he did not mean, it was a promise of trying, together. That alone was worth anything to Archie. 

He’d been wandering the outer areas of the school, enjoying the cool air and the pockets of starry sky filtering through the clouds as he mused, unhurried and not bothered by much. Even Ms. Grundy and Jason Blossom and errant gunshots did not weigh too heavily on his mind, ever-present but out of place in the rare calm Jughead had given him. It was broken now, however, as scuffing sounds and voices reached his ears. He didn’t want to deal with it, whatever it was, but he was fairly certain he recognized Reggie’s voice and the sounds of a body hitting a wall. He didn’t want another confrontation with the hothead, but Fred Andrews had raised him by certain morals and he could not walk away with the knowledge that someone may be hurt.

Words became clear out of the rough sounds of a voice as he got closer to the corner behind which he was now sure was Reggie Mantle and some poor soul trapped between a building and brute in an open field at the edge of the school backed only by deep forest. 

“Damn faggot freak. Bloody psychopath, aren’t you? Get off on hurting people. Or are you one of those freaks that doesn’t feel shit, special little snowflake called a sociopath? That it?” 

Dammit. That was Reggie, pissed and worked into a nightmare. Thudding noises Archie recognizes all too well as violent blows were punctuating the words, making him pick up his pace. He wasn’t willing to run blindly into god knows what, but he wasn’t going to waste time either. 

“You and Andrews ain’t that surprising, honestly, how that little shit hides it so well I’ll never figure out.” Archie’s blood ran cold as he froze, fairly sure he knew who those words were being directed at, the only person they could be directed at. Falling blows and muted grunts spurred him forward and he rounded the corner to see his fears made reality.

Reggie Mantle, giant and bully, had Jughead Jones pinned against a stone wall, held to its surface by a hand fisted in raven hair, his ever-present grey beanie having fallen to the ground forgotten. Bloodstained tanned knuckles from a busted nose, a bruise raised dark and vicious on a pale jaw, made ever worse by the repeated punch knocked into it whenever brown-black eyes would meet defiant grey as they stared into his. Most of the damage though, he knew it laid beneath that shirt, bruises and cuts marring flesh where they wouldn’t be seen. Reggie had done this too many times to be sloppy. 

“Damn serial killer in the making. Probably doing the world a favor, getting rid of you, sparing them your bloody, _necrophilia_ riddled memoirs. Who cares if you killed Jason, he’d only be your first if you did, your twisted version of a wet dream if you didn’t.”

Rage flooded out from Archie’s spine into the rest of his being, covered his vision in black, and this time he didn’t bother to bridle it into submission, to temper it into form. Words failed him as his hands fisted in Reggie Mantle’s stupidly bright jersey, as he pulled him away from his raven-haired companion and threw him to the ground. Anger blocking his senses was not enough that he forgot himself, forgot the one for whom his anger burned. He caught Jughead as he stumbled, settled him gently against the wall that had been his prison and now stood as his support. His eyes caught on bruises finger-shaped and dark on the pale column of a mole ridden throat, and rage-filled him once again but found no outlet as he focused his attention on the boy before him. He had no time to console him nor tend his wounds as Reggie came up from the ground in a blind rage, as he moved to meet him in fury.

He cared not for beatings nor bruises, did not spare the time to beat Reggie into submission. It was tempting though, to beat humility into him, the whisper in his ear to break his legs so he had no choice but to kneel before the raven-boy, the urge to teach the pretender what true devotion looked like. He didn’t heed those whispers though, did not care to spare the time as red mist covered his vision.

Reggie was caught in his grip before he was fully off the ground, thrown carelessly into the wall without a care to the damage it might cause. Brown-black eyes met honeyed eyes turned blazing amber in righteous anger and blood spat from unbruised lips in a cough turned arrogant sneer. “Andrews. Should have known, put the bitch in his place and his whore comes running.”

He could have punched him, bruised him, but he didn’t care to do so. He could have taught him a lesson, but he was beyond the point of holding back. The urge was back, the itch always in his skin now setting his body alight with yearning. This time he didn’t fight it. This time he let it fill him, allowed the _otherness_ under his skin to come out and curl his lips back into a snarl, to bare canines that weren’t too short or too dull glint in the moonlight. Let his fingers curl into claws as he held the unmovable ‘magnificent’ player before him to the wall that he’d intended to be Jughead’s last vigil and tomb. Words didn’t come, didn’t even attempt to form in his throat nor on his tongue as a sound inhuman rang out from his throat, vibrating up from his chest to fill the air that chilled his bared teeth.

Reggie sneered in the face of his fury, scoffed in answer to the growl that filled the air between them. “The hell you gonna do Andrews? Nothing. Nah, I was wrong, you didn’t help Emo Ted Bundy kill Blossom, you just watched like a good little dog, didn’t you?”

If that voice, the one that could command him, had reached him, perhaps he would have stopped, but it was silent and the thing under his skin was tired of waiting, of allowing this thing to harm what he cherished. His weight pinned the boy to the wall, flimsy and temporary and inadequate to imprison a bull of this size, but it was only needed for a moment. The poison in his veins was silent, too slow, too sluggish to outrun the fire burning through him, the flames licking muscles into movement and shrapnel bones into a harsh grip. His hands moved before he’d thought through the action, urged by otherworldly whispers stirring in the void of his desert mind, left grasping a stupidly square jaw and pulling it up, right curling clipped nails still too long over an unmarred throat so perfect compared to the one tanned hands had marred in bruises. 

People assumed their throats were well protected given how important they were, always throwing their heads about carelessly and baring the cords of their neck in laughter and boastfulness. The truth was quite the opposite. The skin of the throat, that stretched over the jugular, was fragile and flimsy, easy to tear. And human hands, they may have been built for tools, but they turned to claws and weapons easily enough. Archie knew that, so he wasn’t surprised as the clipped nails of his right hand tore through flesh and dug in to grasp a rapidly pulsing jugular, as they latched on and he pulled. As he ran those fingers turned to claws across a vulgar, fragile throat, and took away the ability of those arrogant vocal cords to utter filth to either of them ever again. 

Reggie began to choke, eyes blown wide and hands pressing to a suddenly open throat. Archie’s hands, bloody but sure, pinned him to the wall without remorse as sunlit whiskey eyes looked up at the fallen Olympian with vicious, bared teeth. He stood unflinching as the blood ran thick from Reggie’s throat and coated him, lifeblood wasted on a foolish boy running red turned black in the moonlight, pouring down like rain as it coated Archie, painted him in unholy retribution. Archie’s heart sang with worship of the purest form.

Reggie Mantle wouldn’t go home that night, or any night ever again. He fell dead at Archie Andrews’ feet the night of the rained-out pep rally, the red of his life painting a monster of devotion in vengeance. 

Archie stood over him without care, bare canines exposed further as twisted lips pulled further in bloody vengeance. His body felt contented, good, as if he’d served his purpose to protect, to worship in blood and protective fury. His blood sang with the feeling of violence, of retribution. He wasn’t alive, did not feel as a living creature. Under his skin existed only the emptiness, the void of space unmarred by stars where his heart and soul should have been cradled by pale hands, gone since his starlight had left. The only thing there was creeping vines of poison weaving under his skin until they smothered him, commanded to grow by honeyed words and sugared threats. He’d been dying slowly for the weeks, months since poison first slid past his lips, had been wilting where he stood on temple steps until the one who commanded him had cast him out. He’d been lifeless since then, wandering blind and choking in a lifeless wilderness, but for a moment, a flame-licked divine moment of fury for the one who held his heart, he’d felt as if he once again stood within the temple where he wrought worship as sacrilegious blood had rained down on unholy hands made deadly in devotion.

But now poison crept into his veins where flames had brought life. Now the reality of loneliness left the crushing weight of endless space without starlight. It didn’t bring guilt nor remorse, he could regret no act of worship, but apathy settled heavily like ice behind his nonexistent heart as the destruction of loneliness temporarily cast off settled again like chains over his bones, and poison, ever present poison, crept back up his veins to pool in his stomach and reach up, up, up to curl around his throat and choke off his air until his vision swam black.

“Archie.” That voice broke the barriers of his mind, uttered soft and reverent. Amber eyes found grey eyes beginning to turn blue and green in the swirls of a storm. 

“Jug…” It was whispered brokenly in the night, a plea he couldn’t hope to translate to words. Yet his companion seemed to understand, gentle hands reaching for him, carding through his hair in gentle care. He stood frozen, a crumbling statue wrought from brittle stone, unable to move yet unable to stand against the winds and tides.

Yet that voice reached for him, the lightest breeze of air reaching across desert planes, through swirling storms of poisoned hate, to break softly against the shores that had known only punishing storms of pain for days that felt like an eternity. Uttered softly, “Tell me, Archie.” As if he knew the weight behind a thorn-pierced tongue and choking voice, knew all the words left unsaid. Perhaps he did, he’d always known what Archie could not say, the weight if not the meaning. But this foreign thing would have to be said, spoken into existence in the air between them, too wretched for this dark boy to know without being told. 

Blue-grey-green eyes lit into movement, frozen cosmos beginning to move once again into turning, twisting light turned to land on dulled amber, nothing else left in their attention. He stepped closer and pale hands that had never been rough became gentle as they settled in flamed hair, cradled the head of a broken boy. “ _Tell me._ ”

And how could he refuse? When he’d given this boy his worship in the form of retribution and blood and death? How could he refuse this command to bare his soul? 

A whine high and pained left the throat that had just a few minutes before reverberated with a growl of anger. He couldn’t do it anymore, could not maintain the façade of composure, of wholeness when he was shattering. He crumbled, fell to his knees and looked up with utter devotion to his Beloved. “ _Jug._ ”

Gentle hands carded through his hair, held him together with strength he himself did not possess as he shattered. “Tell me, Archie. All of it.”

So he does. Coaxes a heavy tongue laden with sickening shame that hasn’t been able to curl around words for days into speaking the ugly truth of his reality, breaks his teeth on the jagged edges of the poison that’s been choking him now spewing from between his lips, forces it into words and he can’t, he can’t, **_he can’t_** … but he does…because this boy commands he do so.

He tells him. Tells him about the days of labor under a punishing sun that saw too much, that reached too far for creatures of the dark. Tells him of the days long and hard and unforgiving, tells him of the exhaustion and the breaking under the weight of work that never ended. Tells him of the long walks home without companion to distract from the weary cry of his aching body. Breaks into crystals shards of broken glass as he tells him of the day he could barely walk from exhaustion and bruises, of the favorite music teacher who’d offered to take him home….home…his home….he’d thought it was his home.

Poison and revulsion at the sight of his own skin has built and built and built over the weeks and months until it fills him, presses on the sides of his stomach and strangles his desire to eat, to drink, to exist, built higher and higher with every memory of a phantom touch. It’s a sea that surges up now, pulling him down into its black depths and he’s drowning in it, voice stuttering as he chokes over the words of how she took him _home_ , _home_ , _home that wasn’t_ ** _his home_** , surges into the swells of a black storm as he barely regurgitates the words that say what she did to him. That black sea is surging up, pulling him into its depths, and its overflowing, tears falling down from broken amber eyes over the flesh of cheeks pulled taunt from neglect. 

Pale hands are still, unmoving as they hold his head upturned, prevent him from looking away, as if he had the strength to do so. He can barely feel those hands and he can’t see those storm colored eyes with his blackened, tear-blurred gaze, but he can feel them piercing his skin, staring at his rotten soul, and they command him so he continues to choke up the poison that’s turned to agony in his throat.

The screams that want to ring from his throat, broken and piercing to usher in the darkness, to drown out the banshees’ cries cannot pass the blockade of self-loathing that sears itself into his being like a thousand brands to mark the unworthy as his voice chokes out the words that should never be strung together into this, into the truth of what delicate hands turned to iron manacles and soft lips turned to shrapnel imprinted into his body, into his soul. But this boy commands and Archie cannot deny him, so his voice forms the words so foreign no language should possess them and tells him of the touches he didn’t want, the acts he couldn’t escape, the prison of floral pillows and lace throws that clung to his skin like iron shackles heated until they melted into flesh, binding him in place.

Sobs break his words but this poison, now that it’s begun, will not stay still and it spills from his lips, falls to the ground and fills the air, coating him in its inescapable confines. He prays these words inelegant and unworthy of a writer’s ears make sense as he tells the truth of his panic, the reality of wanting to escape, of being frozen in terror because he didn’t know what was happening, because he didn’t understand, because this, **_this_** couldn’t be happening, couldn’t be **_real_**. Tells this boy the feeling of the wrong hands on his skin, of the wrong creature using a body that didn’t belong to them, that should have only belonged to one being built of stardust and darkness and storms. Tells him of the ocean’s tears that slid silently from his eyes and vile hands that had wiped them away with soft crooning turned mocking. Tells him how it felt to break under soft hands turned cruel, tells him of the desperation to escape, the feeling of breaking apart when the deed was done, when his skin was branded by fingers and kisses that shouldn’t have touched him.

The poison that spews violently form his lips and sears his tongue like acid chokes off his throat, does not allow him to be sick as his stomach clenches around knives. He’d be sick if he could, but he can’t and it hurts, it _hurts_ …But this boy commands and he has never disobeyed him, has never been able to, so poison words fall from parted lips and he tells him. Tells him of being paralyzed by inhuman eyes no longer hidden behind glasses as they pierced his soul after inhuman hands and sharp teeth had branded his body, of the honeyed voice that thrust itself into his ears and burrowed into his core with sugar-coated threats of _‘Who would believe that a sixteen-year-old boy didn’t know what he was doing? Didn’t want it?’ and ‘What would your dear father think with his poor heart? His golden boy chasing skirts.’ and ‘My you are a passionate thing, the bruises you left! I do hope no one sees it, they might…misunderstand how things went.’_ Bruises….bruises left not from holding her down but from scrabbling desperately to get away. Bruises….bruises and scratches and bites marring his skin that no one would believe were placed there deliberately…would think were an act of desperation to escape a sixteen-year-old boy who knew his strength and used it against a smaller woman. 

He feels those hands again for a moment, pulling at his hair, and his own hands come up in desperate panic, clinging to fabric as his voice hitches into hysterical sobs. “ _Archie._ ” A single word shocks a moment of clarity into his mind and he realizes those hands aren’t **_hers_** , they belong to the boy above him, tightened in anger not directed at him. He can’t make his hands fall and he isn’t admonished for it, but he can make his voice reign in to something that is not calm, but that can be understood. He can’t, but he will.

His lungs burn and he has no choice but to take a moment, to take a handful of minutes to gasp desperately to fill burning lungs seared in poison and shame with the vestiges of air fighting past a throat held so long in the stranglehold of delicate hands that it’s now bruised and raw. It isn’t done, the poison isn’t finished spewing from his body, but the boy before him knows this, does not push him, allows him these moments to breathe in silence. 

He wants to break, wants to crumble until there’s nothing left. But his job isn’t done, his Beloved’s command not fulfilled. He can break when it’s finished, after this boy to whom he owes devotion passes judgement over him, decides to cast him away for the broken thing he is or gathers his shattered form in his arms, until then he’ll finish this command, finish this last act of worship turned wretched and unworthy, complete the last devotion he may be allowed. Basks in the last place of safety he may ever know.

So he opens his mouth, jaws gaping wide around broken shards of his own soul and poison he never wanted as it spills forth again, forms into words of ugly truth that should never been known by the light of day nor the dark of night. He utters the sounds that shape into words that lay bare his pain, tell of every time in the last weeks and months that delicate hands and soft voice and porcelain skin had found him in moments when he was defenseless. When they pulled him away with honey-sweet threats and sugared promises of things he didn’t want. Of every time they made him a plaything to a monster he’d never dreamed could exist. Breaks as he tells of every attempt made to never be alone, to never be vulnerable, to never be where this shadow could find him, and of every time it failed, again and again, the shadow finding him in school, in the afternoons, in work, in the night pitch black that used to hold comfort but now only brought fear. Tells of every effort to get away, of every twist and turn he’d taken to try and get out of the poison web he didn’t know how he’d stumbled into. His voice breaks with heaving breaths and tears falling like shattered glass the way his soul broke and splintered over the weeks every time he tried to find a way out, every time he failed, every time **_she_** found him, again and again. He crumbles like the shore in the face of a hurricane as he unearths every wish he’d had over the eternity since summer to lay his pain bare to his father, to fall to his knees and confess to his Beloved as he did now. Chokes now as he did then on the fear and lines of chains that held him captive and kept him silent, but now the breakwater has shattered and the ocean of suffering it has held at bay spills from his lips in poison words and his eyes in shattered tears.

There’s no more, all of it laid out for the boy above him, the one who holds his fragile soul, to see. Yet it’s done nothing, the weight of all the poison that’s left his lips a mere drop in the never-ending ocean he’s drowning in. He can feel it still, the acid burning of it pressing at the back of his throat as blackened vines choke his throat, can feel the pressure of it that wants to spill out like the sickness it is, but he can no longer find the words to express it. There’s poison in his throat, acid on his tongue, and tears continuing to fall like shattered glass, tearing bloody tracks into his skin. There’s too much, too much, and he needs to say something, needs this pain to form words, to fall from his tongue but it won’t, won’t, _it won’t_. The words that fall from bruised lips and a burning tongue, choked out of a poison-filled throat are broken, falling on the trails of destructive sobs. 

**_“I’m sorry.”_ **

It’s all he can say, and he knows it’s not enough, could never be enough for the pain he’s caused his Beloved, but there’s nothing else left. Nothing left but the decree of whatever sentence the boy holding his soul, who owns his devotion will hand down for his crime.

His words trail off, chased by panting breaths, and he doesn’t try to fill the air now polluted with anything more. He’s spoken the truth of his suffering, bared his soul and the poison that has been eating away at it, bared it all in the darkness of the night to the eyes of his Beloved. His command fulfilled. He has nothing more to do now, no more reason to continue.

He crumbles, the last supports that had been holding him together turning to dust. He doesn’t expect the arms that catch him. He doesn’t expect the hands that have never harmed him in any way he hadn’t wanted now gentle as they hold him. 

Jughead Jones has fallen to his knees, uncaring for the blood seeping into his jeans and coating his hands as he gathers the shattering pieces of Archie Andrews in his arms. His Cherished One is falling and he knows that he won’t be able to stop himself, he knows that these lungs that had breathed in stardust and wrought songs for his ears alone to hear would continue to convulse until they capsized, knows that his fragile heart that had been strong for so long under the onslaught of evils that shouldn’t exist, even to beings like them, would break and stutter to a stop if he did not calm it. With careful hands he cups Archie’s tearstained face and turns him until the moonlight illuminates every beautiful edge of his features. Wipes away crystal tears with thumbs now tacky with the blood coating his Cherished. Breathes out his anger into flames of stardust about to ignite into novas that would swallow solar systems, fills his lungs with the cold air of a calm sea, breathes it out into a soft plea. _“Archie.”_

He doesn’t have to say more than that, knows that his soul’s cherished will respond to him. Tentative, agonizing breaths filter into shredded lungs and Amber eyes cracked into splinters open as they’re bade to look up into eyes no longer grey, no longer closed to him. Archie looks up with amber turned to dust and sees into the sea storms of legend swirling with life around black holes, they stare down into his own with life he hasn’t seen in the weeks since he’s harmed his Beloved with his mistakes, filled with the stardust of the cosmos as they light life into amber again turning to sunlight.

Archie’s breath stuttered into shallow breaths as he looked up into those eyes, as he saw the weight of Jughead’s emotions shining through, reminding him of the strength that had garnered his devotion all those years ago. Fury lit the cosmos into movement, promised retribution, but these things, though they were for him, they were not intended for him, they were held in check by force of will and when they were released they would lay waste, destruction complete and terrible, somewhere else. Tenderness and care caught him by surprise, froze his stuttering heart into a calm beat as he saw them, as he saw their intensity rivaling the stars in the heavens, directed entirely to and for him. 

When Archie looked up at him with pain-filled amber eyes that should never, _never_ have looked at him with fear as they did now, Jughead breathed a sigh of sorrow and pain from a heart that bled for the boy in his arms. In the brief moment of calm when he knew those eyes looked on him with recognition, heart and lungs calmed into stillness in the redhead’s chest, Jughead laced a hand through flaming hair turned to dull embers and breathed out the truth of his soul. _“It’s alright.”_

He wished he hadn’t been expecting the shock that lit amber eyes into glowing embers, wishes tears would stop falling from eyes that should only ever shine in vicious joy and devoted love, but he knows these tears are the weight of love Archie hadn’t expected to feel again, so he accepts them. He merely holds his boy together as he crumbles in his arms, shatters in the knowledge that he’s safe, that Jughead will keep him safe.

Archie looks up into eyes of galaxies and storms, sees them clearly through the blurring of his tears and he hears it clearly when that voice whispers to him _“It’s gonna be okay, Baby.”_ He feels his soul shatter in a new way when the endearment he hadn’t dared to hope to hear again falls on his ears, feels the mottled mess of pieces that had broken and reformed a thousand times until it was unrecognizable shatter with glowing light, feels it begin to reform into what it was supposed to be once more, poisoned honey chased from where it clung by his Beloved’s love, devotion returned. Those eyes pierce into his own and Archie feels it as pale hands that have never harmed him, never left a bruise he hadn’t asked for, hadn’t cherished, reach past the cage of his ribs, past his bones to cradle his fragile blackened heart, to hold it safe, to give it reason to beat once again. 

Poison clings to him, but it’s fleeing under the knowing heat of his Beloved’s piercing gaze. He’s broken but he can feel the bones knitting themselves together again, the desert flooding with rain from the ocean once again turned into a storm, a storm no longer stirred by poisoned pain but the urging of blackened love and unholy devotion that commands the stars to sing. He shatters but he’s whole for the first time in weeks that had stretched into eternity. He’s _**home**_.

He doesn’t know how much time passes but his breaths are shallow and calm when Jughead bades him move. Gentle hands cup his head long since cradled in the crook of a pale shoulder and make him look up into gentle eyes as Jughead looks down at him. “Arch…you with me?” 

He can barely speak so he nods and Jughead smiles down at him. “Alright. I need you to move Archie.” He can’t help the whine, high and pitiful, that leaves his throat without his permission. Gentle lips press to his forehead with the barest hint of a grin. “I know baby, I know. But we can’t stay here.” Jughead pulls back from him and shifting eyes pin his own. “Get up Archie.” It’s gentle but the steel beneath marks it as a command, so he moves before thinking, forces weary muscles sapped of their strength to contract, to make him sit up, to stand. Jughead helps him, stands with him, steadies him and bears his weight as he stumbles, no indication that the untold minutes kneeling on the harsh ground have affected him at all. 

“Alright buddy. Showers. Let’s get you cleaned up.” Jughead pushes him gently, hands never leaving him as they prompt him to walk to outer walkways. It isn’t a long walk to the outdoor lockers he’d left only earlier that night, and distantly he thinks that they’re lucky it hadn’t started raining again. Jughead is only glad the blood marring Archie’s clothing has dried to a point that it does not track across the concrete ground.

He maneuvers the taller redhead into the locker room with careful hands, pushes him to the shower and gently pushes him to the ground until he is sitting down. He kneels in front of him, hooks careful fingers under his chin and urges his head up, brushes red hair from amber eyes as they meet his own and he can’t help the fond smile that pulls at his lips. “Hey.” Archie doesn’t move, but Jughead knows the clarity in his eyes, knows he’s alert and attentive to him. “I need you to stay here while I take care of things.”

Archie doesn’t process what those words mean, only that Jughead is leaving, and those eyes widen with panic. Jughead presses him gently, firmly back into the tiles, pierces brown eyes with his own. “I’ll be back in a few minutes, but you need to stay here. Trust me Archie.”

The panic and the fight it brings flees from the boy’s body at those words and he nods his head, still unable to forms words with his weary tongue. That’s ok, Jughead doesn’t need him to speak. He ducks forward long enough to press a lingering kiss to red hair and then he’s gone, trusting the boy who looks at him like he hung the stars to stay where he placed him, to trust him.

He walks back to the hidden corner where Reggie Mantle had threatened his life, where Archie’s dark devotion had become physical anger burning in violent worship, where the body of a brute pretending to be an Olympian of old lays lifeless on the ground. He stands at the edges of that field, looks over the area with apathy, whatever he felt for Jason’s passing absent as he looks over the empty husk that had been ‘Mantle the Magnificent’. He sees what Archie left him, sees what he has at hand, sees what he needs to do.

It isn’t easy or light work, but it takes time, requires minutes that stretch into dozens, minutes taken to mind every detail, minutes he won’t dare cut short. It isn’t a long time, but it’s still longer than he had wanted to leave his red-headed wild thing. He moves Reggie’s body with care, not out of respect, but in the interest of keeping any traces of himself off the body. He takes him several paces into the woods that line this side of the school, absentmindedly thankful the fool had chosen this place to make his bigotry and ignorant hatred known. He takes care to clean his blood from the boy’s hands, takes equal care to dirty them with dust so their cleaning was not apparent. Takes tedious and meticulous care to remove any obvious sign of himself or Archie from his person. Then he stands and searches for what he needs. This is what takes him the time he hadn’t wanted to spend away from Archie, but he finds what he needs: A carcass, the one some idiot boys had boasted about bringing down, a bear shot multiple times across its ribs before it had run away, run to this spot to die. He mourns the senseless death of an innocent creature, but he idly gives thanks to nothing in particular that it is here, that it has decayed just enough that he can take the paw from its body. It’s intact enough to do what he needs. It’s whole enough, claws still sharp enough that he can kneel beside Reggie’s body and line them up with the tracks of Archie’s fingers turned claws in fury, still deadly enough even now to rend the flesh and tear the throat in a single sweep until it appears that no human hand in ethereal rage had made this wound.

He takes the paw back to the animal’s body and buries it in the ground. Returns to the body of a human boy and casts his gaze over him once more, ensures there is no flaw to the apparent scene that would not occur naturally, or at least without human hand. Above him the sky splits in light and he turns his face up to meet the rain that pours down. He smiles as he walks back towards the school, a small twist of lips, wrought from satisfaction as he sees the rain pelt down, washing away the not yet dried blood where Reggie Mantle died for harming the one thing Archie Andrews bowed to in devotion. ‘Good,’ He muses, ‘It will wash away the blood and wash the body of whatever remains.’

He thinks no more on it as he gathers his beanie and steps once again into the locker room, turns his attention fully to the boy still sitting where he’d left him in the showers. He’s picking at his nails now and the normal action of anxiety makes Jughead smile in fondness and relief. He kneels before the boy, raises his chin with gentle hands and smiles when amber eyes meet his with a tentative pull of lips that isn’t quite a smile, but is close enough.

“Hey Arch.” He grins even more as the taller boy’s head lolls to the side, presses into his palm and amber eyes peer up at him shyly from under cedar bangs. “Let’s get you washed up, yeah?”

Archie seemed to have regained some of his strength, but he still relies heavily on Jughead to move, to do much of anything. That was alright. There wasn’t a reality Jughead could fathom where he would mind taking care of Archie. Carefully he stood him up, the pair of them giggling like children when he had to catch him because Archie’s legs had gone numb and locked in place from sitting on the ground. 

He turned the water on, let it warm up as he carefully stripped Archie of his bloody clothes, knowing it would be more than warm enough by the time they were finished with the distraction of hands gently soothing over clothed skin. Henley and shoes and socks came off easily enough, were piled to the side without a care, but Archie began to panic when pale hands tried to peel the t-shirt from his skin. He backed away, whining sounds ringing from his throat in distress as his arms crossed over his own body, as he curled into himself. As he hid from the gaze and touch of a boy who he had never turned from before, who had worshiped him with words and touches alike and made him feel alive.

Jughead swallowed down the anger that surged up his throat at the sight, fought the urge to scream in pain and fury at the sounds breaking like glass in his ears. He didn’t touch didn’t want to spark panic, but his hands reached out all the same, hovered in the air trying to calm the boy as his voice rang out in quiet tones. “Archie. It’s okay baby, it’s only us here, you’re safe.” Archie stilled at his voice, desperate sounds ceasing, leaving deafening silence in their wake. His hands still clutched at his own skin, eyes still staring into the ground sightless with panic. “It’s me, baby. You’re safe, I swear to you love, you’re safe.”

Amber eyes flickered up to meet his own and Jughead dared to ease closer while Archie chewed nervously on his lip. At the very least Jughead knew his friend was present in the here and now, not seeing the ghost of a monster any longer. “I…my skin…Jug…it’s broken…” The words came to him slowly, quiet and fearful, they broke his heart. He stepped closer, ducked his head so amber eyes could see his own. “Show me, baby. It’s okay.” 

That reassurance seemed to be enough, not to heal, but to make it safe. His arms loosened their holds and he let Jughead touch him, let pale hands gentle the fabric from his body until he was left bare under a stormy gaze. Jughead pulled him close, pressed soft kisses to his face and soothed careful hands across his sides. He backed him into the shower with careful steps, pressing him lightly into the tiled wall at his back before he stepped away to undress. He took that moment with his back turned to his companion to let his anger burn through him, anger burning because of the marks he hadn’t looked at properly yet but could see easily in his peripheral for how dark they bruised against tan skin. Anger joining and feeding the nebulas of fury swirling violently but contained, deep within him, waiting. He lets it burn for a moment before he bridles it, it has no place here in the space where he needs to be gentle. It will find its place soon enough, will burn through the cosmos until his fury is sated, but not here.

He sheds his clothes with the absent wonder at how little blood stained the fabric and drops them in a separate shower, collecting Archie’s and placing them there as well before he turned the water on to stream down on the clothes he separated, washing the beginnings of the blood from them. He could soak them in bleach, wash them clean, and burn them but they each had so few outfits that it would be noticeable if they both suddenly lost common items from their wardrobe, so he would take the effort to clean them. 

Clothing dealt with and anger bridled down into a manageable beast he turned back to his friend, paused there without shame for his bareness when he saw those eyes resting on him wearily and anxiously but without the terror that had plagued them before. He hesitated a moment, wanted to give him an out, the one he always left but Archie never took, had never need to take before…now though… 

“Archie?”

The redhead didn’t raise his head, didn’t change his expression as he gazed at him. One of his hands slowly raised from where his arms were loosely looped across his stomach, raised toward him with fingers outstretched, reaching for him, asking for him. It was all the permission he needed before he stepped forward and crossed the divide between them, lacing his fingers with the ones outstretched towards him and holding on tightly. Archie didn’t shy from him and so Jughead did not give him any reason to think that he should. He surged forward with gentle care, a wave caressing and hugging the shore instead of a storm hitting the breakwaters, and pressed the line of his body against Archie’s, a reassuring pressure as opposed to the passionate one it might have been in other circumstances. But then passion was still there he supposed. Was love any less passionate when it reached out in gentle care instead of burning ecstasy?

Archie’s hand reached for him, clung to flesh the way it might’ve clothing, so Jughead let his other hand go so it may join its twin, so his little wild thing could cling to him. Threaded his own hand through fiery locks once long that would be once again, already reaching, already twining round his fingers into the beginnings of braids as they used to, heedless of the constrictions society screamed down upon them. Society could not reach them, held no power over them. So he tangled his fingers in soft hair and pressed desperate kisses to a furrowed brow, endless streams of endearments falling from his lips without thought. Let the ragged edges of Archie Andrews reach out and engulf him with desperation, welcomed them with love and safety.

Slowly the boy in his arms began to calm, and Jughead held him through the process, gentle words murmured into his temple where a kiss had long since become a lingering caress. When he was reasonably sure that Archie could stand on his own, would not misunderstand and panic if he moved away, Jughead took a step back and looked down at what his boy had been so scared to show him. 

He had an intimate understanding of the anger that had moved Archie into violence that night, felt it himself now, but he had no one to direct it towards so he pushed it down, let it simmer in the depths where it could never harm the boy before him. Archie’s torso was a motley of finger-shaped bruises left from punishing grips scattered across his sides and hips, deep red blotches a mockery of ‘love-marks’ had been rained down like blows against his chest, the imprinting of teeth joining them in an honest display of savagery hidden as tenderness, they were matched by deep red welts tracked across his sides and Jughead knew they wrapped around to his back, the claw marks of a monster left in brutal heat and so-called ‘passion’ that burned only to consume and destroy.

He stared down at them, the evidence of a monster’s savagery, the reason his bright boy had been terrified to let him touch his skin for weeks. His hands soothed across them with a gentleness he knew Archie hadn’t felt since the summer, unable to remove the marks but wiping away the pain of them with tenderness. A broke whimper turned a desperate, pained whine sounded off the tiles, resonating from Archie’s brutalized vocal cords that had spilled out weeks of poison that night. Jughead’s gaze snapped up to Archie’s face at the sound, saw the unsurety, the pain and the fear reflected in amber eyes that peered up at him with anxiety, fear of what Jughead would do, fear he would push him away in disgust, the same disgust he could see burning in amber depths and turned inward. 

His hands cradled a tan jaw without conscious thought as he pressed a desperate, brutally gentle kiss to Archie’s lips, swallowed the sounds of that pain and pressed against him desperately. He pulled back only far enough to speak, pressing his forehead to Archie’s as ardent promises fell from his lips while he carded pale hands through soaked red hair. “No more. There’ll be no more Archie.” His eyes snapped open, searing blue and grey and green tumbling together into a starlight storm flashing with lightning, they met Archie’s amber and the boy stilled under his gaze, only to be surrounded and held captive by his words. “She’ll never touch you again, I swear my love.”

Amber eyes went wide but the boy they belonged to didn’t break again, only gathered strength to press against Jughead and hold him with desperation turned once again to devotion. Jughead did not swear what he would not make reality, what he would not destroy reality to make truth, and Archie, dark and twisted and broken, knew that. He pressed into Jughead with strength he hadn’t felt in days, strength spilling from his raven’s lips where they pressed to his own and filling his lungs with life, twisting, burning, making him feel alive again. 

They stayed there, pressed together for well over half an hour, Archie regaining strength from the presence of his Beloved once again, once again without anger or pain and overflowing with love directed entirely towards him. Jughead pulls back from him eventually and Archie is strong enough in soul and body that he doesn’t chase after him. It’s not like he goes far, only leans back from him enough to look at him properly, to smile up at him with a gentle twist of lips. 

“Let’s get you cleaned up, yeah?” It’s whispered in the air between them, just audible above the running water, and Archie knows he’s right, knows they can’t stay there forever. His body is wrung out from the night’s upheaval and he doesn’t yet possess the strength to do it himself, so he only nods, trusts rather than hopes that his Beloved will take care of him. His raven only smiles at him with that knowing pull of lips, merely runs careful fingers under his eyes to rub away the blood and tears dried there, the remnants of a sacrifice in unholy vengeance and brutal devotion offered up in worship.

He washes him carefully, generic soap he wouldn’t have chosen to use on his dear one forming a latticework of suds over tan skin that would take time to heal but would never be harmed by **_her_** hands again, washes the blood that had bathed him in reckoning from his body, sees it chased across the tiles to the drain by warming water that clings to their lashes. His fingers card through red hair darkened by red blood turned black, carefully untangling the matted sections, rinsing the vestiges of a life ended in retribution and worship from the strands until only water clings to soft fire. 

When Archie’s colors of gold and fire are unmarred by anything more than the water caressing his skin, Jughead kisses him softly and steps away to wash himself. He doesn’t take anywhere near the care he’d given his lover with himself, merely runs the soaps across his skin and lets the water wash it away carrying the much smaller volume of another’s blood spilled for his sake with it. He washes his hair to be safe, runs the soap through it thoroughly and feels for tangles of dried blood, feels tentative fingers join his own and making him still his callous washing. He peers up at Archie though the strands hanging in his face and can’t help the fondness in his chest or the smile on his lips at the smallest pout on Archie’s lips, at the feeling of his best friend’s hands carding through his hair and rubbing over his scalp, determined to show the level of care Jughead had given him, at least in this. He allows it, has no reason not to, drops his hands to tanned hips and lets his Cherished One wash his hair. 

When the water runs clear of both soap and blood those hands settled on the sides of his neck, cradling pale, bruised skin between them. Jughead looks up at Archie and sees the frown pulling between his brows, the anger and concern melding in his eyes as they look over the marks. Archie feels his gaze and amber eyes meet his. He grins, something sharp and fierce and wild, and he does not have to look to see the wonder and reverence on Archie’s expression as he tilts his head back, as he bares his throat to the only one who was ever allowed to rest there. Tentative fingers map the marks, trace them and note the damage they’ve inflicted without causing pain. Jughead’s hand comes up, curls over Archie’s, overlays their fingers as he meets his eyes and presses reverent fingers into the marks marring pale skin. His grin hasn’t fallen, grows only sharper as tan fingers hold tender pressure without his prompting, his own hand merely resting alongside Archie’s own and no longer directing him to act. 

The thumb of that hand ghosts across the column of his throat, somehow unmarred by careless violence. Tentative. Asking. Jughead smiles in earnest then, love curling around sharp teeth and pulling the edges of a vicious grin into fondness without softening them. His unused hand raises from Archie’s hips to thread into his hair, cupping the side of his head with tenderness. Archie leans into it and Jughead tugs him forward with carefully measured strength, leads him to his throat. The boy before him follows willingly and without fear, burrows his nose into the hollow of Jugheads throat, breathes deeply of the scent more familiar than his own, settles without care as the raven boy welcomes his wild thing home. Archie alone is allowed at the vulnerable expanse of Jughead’s throat, and the dark boy welcomes his winter fire home without fear.

They rest there, their souls and the bond twining dark and red between them previously torn asunder now settling once again beneath their skin. The water begins to run cold and Jughead knows they have to go, needs to see his cherished home and warm and safe from the cruelties of monsters hidden amidst pastel colors and soft smiles. 

“Archie.” A groaned sound meant to be a question sounds from the vague area of his collarbone and Jughead can’t help the laugh that bubbles up his throat. He turns his head, noses at soaking wet red strands and rests his cheek there. “We need to move.” The groan is most decidedly not a question but a complaint this time and Jughead wants to snicker, maybe he did, he wasn’t sure. “Water’s going cold, and I’m sure we’d both be more comfortable in bed and, ya know, not being woken up by the football team at morning practice ‘cause we fell asleep here.” That garners a groan turned sigh as Archie stands a little straighter, looks down at him with tired eyes that want to shut tight in sleep.

Jughead grins softly and presses a kiss to his nose as he shuts the water off. “Come on.” He steps away, ready to catch the boy if he stumbles, but it wasn’t necessary, Archie swayed but did not fall. Jughead did not waste time though, gathering two of the school’s towels and wrapping one around his waist, turning the other shower off as he went back to Archie and used the second one to dry him off carefully. Tired as he was, Archie still managed to grab the towel from him after several failed attempts and informed him to take care of himself with no small amount of petulance and pouting. Jughead laughed, short and bright as it bounced off the tiles.

He dries himself quickly, returning the towel to his waist as he moves to Archie’s locker. He’s long since known the combination, had it memorized before Archie did, and he makes use of it now. It swings open without issue and he gathers the extra outfit Archie keeps on hand, an old pair of jeans and a second henley, deep blue this time. He gathers another set of clothes from the back of the top shelf, a set of dark jeans and an old red hooded shirt, his clothes that Archie had always kept for him ‘just in case’. It made Jughead smile with fondness, Archie’s eternal care and need to make sure Jughead was alright, even if it was something as simple as a pair of clothes that he’d never once asked for in two years. He needed them tonight though, and Archie would probably tease him about finally needing them after all this time when they were both rested and calm and **_safe_** again.

He dresses as quickly as he’d dried himself, runs the towel over his hair and tosses it across the locker room bench. He sets the clothes on the bench as well before he turns towards Archie. The boy has finished drying himself off and Jughead is glad that the desperate need to cover himself hadn’t returned. The towel hangs loose on his hips, arms limp at his sides while he watches Jughead, waits to be told what to do because tonight he can’t muster the strength to take care of himself. His injuries aren’t on display but they are bared for him to see, no longer a source of shame, not under the weight of Jughead’s gaze at least. 

He steps up to him and takes the time to press a chaste kiss to his lips as he gathered his hands in his own, steps backward and pulls him forward gently. Archie follows willingly and lets Jughead take the towel, lets the raven-haired boy who held his heart slide faded denim up his legs and worn cotton over his chest. He lets him put the towel over his head to dry his hair too, and maybe that was a mistake because they’re both still teenage boys and Jughead decides to be a little shit and rub his hair with far more energy than is strictly necessary. He doesn’t let up until Archie’s grumble complaints turn to boyish shouts and tanned arms flail upward to knock him away and pull the towel from his head. He looks up with a scowl only to see the grin of a childhood friend who’s-never-too-old-to-screw-with-you spread proudly across Jughead’s face. The laughter’s a dead giveaway too. Archie lunges at him with a playful growl, shoves him gently and carefully but still sharply into the lockers in their roughhousing, pinning him there and framing him with his arms. He grins sharp and childish as he ducks his head into Jughead’s face and shakes it vigorously, long and growing longer strands of wet red hair hitting the raven boy in the face, spraying him with the water droplets the towel didn’t gather.

Jughead’s laughter rings off the tiles and he finally cries ‘uncle’ as his pale hands shove at Archie without any real malice or strength behind them. Archie backs off, stops shaking his wet mane like the mangy mutt Jughead will call him but that he isn’t. He doesn’t move back though, merely hangs his head in the slightly wider space between them, his brief spark of energy gone as quickly as it had come. He’s panting lightly, almost silently, but when Jughead cups his chin in his palm and raises his head there’s a small smile on his lips and mirth in his eyes. He kisses him softly, mummers ‘Come on’ against his lips and gentles him to the side so he can move.

Archie stands to the side obediently as Jughead moves towards the benches. He gathers up the shoes they’d discarded earlier and frowns down at them for a moment. He turns towards Archie and points to the bench. “Sit. I’ll be back in a minute.” He sees no sign of distress at the insinuation that he’s going somewhere, that he’s leaving, so he turns to his task as Archie does as he’s bade.

The janitor’s closet is never locked, he’s spent a few nights there before, knows that to be the case. So he’s unsurprised when it opens for him, when the single lightbulb in the ancient closet, kept stocked but never used because it was out of date and at the edges of campus, flickers to life. Under the dust he finds what he needs, and so he carries the tools and the shoes both to the little sink in the back corner and sets to work cleaning the blood from stiff fabric and rubber and leather. They’ll never be ‘good as new’, but the blood is gone from them when he’s done. He puts the chemicals back, washes the shoes off, washes the harsh compounds from his hands, and returns to Archie, the ancient bulb flickering off and the creaking door swinging shut to be forgotten once again.

He dries them off as best he can with his discarded towel when he gets back before handing the sneakers to Archie and slipping the boots on his own feet. He turns towards the soaking pile of clothes on the tiled shower floor as Archie puts his shoes on. He scrutinizes them, sees that the blood has mostly washed from the woven strands, that whatever is left will wash away in the laundry. It isn’t perfect but it will have to do because the alternative would draw too much attention. 

He picks them up one by one and wrings out as much of the water as he can, tossing them into a pile as he finishes with them. He’d taken one other thing from the storage room, slipped it into his pocket for this task: A plastic trash bag. He retrieves it and shoves their soaked clothes inside of it, tying it off unceremoniously.

He tossed the school towels into the wash baskets still full from the pep rally and looked around, scanned the area critically and saw no obvious indication of what had transpired there that night. Satisfied he turned back to Archie and saw the boy sitting where he had been directed, eyes watching him with calm curiosity. He walked up to him with a gentle smile and held out his hand. “Come on Arch, let’s go home.”

Archie took his hand and stood, managed to hold his own weight despite his exhaustion. Jughead lead them out of the dim room and out into the cold night, grateful that the rain had calmed to a light pattering while they had recovered. All the same, he wanted to have them home before it began to fall again in earnest as the thunder rolling overhead promised.

They had to walk nearly half the town to reach the Andrews’ household, and Jughead made it longer still by winding them around paths where fewer watching eyes might see them. Archie noticed but did not complain despite his tiredness, barely stumbled at all along the way. Despite the dark, the distance, and the raven-haired boy’s caution, they reached the house in less than an hour, slipping inside the kitchen door almost silently. 

Jughead wasted no time in ushering Archie up the stairs, dropping the bag in his hand as he went. He knew that Fred Andrews would be expecting a late return since Archie hadn’t come home right after the pep rally nor at any normal time, knew they were lucky he wasn’t waiting up for them, but he wasn’t willing to tempt fate and risk waking the man with excessive noise. 

Once in Archie’s bedroom he made quick work of gathering soft sleeping clothes for the two of them, soft pants and loose shirts, caring more that they would bring comfort over warmth. They would be warm enough sharing the bed between them. Archie was already slipping out of his wet shirt when Jughead turned to him and the sight of his boy, tired and worn out and practically falling over himself brought a smile of adoration to Jughead’s lips. He stepped into the boy’s space without asking, didn’t need permission, and helped him undress. Helped him dress again for the second time that night immediately after. Had no trouble replacing soaked denim with faded flannel and drenched cotton with older, thinner, dry cotton. He hesitated only a moment to make sure the boy would not fall before he turned away.

Archie leaned heavily against the wall and watched with eyes that could barely focus as Jughead changed his own clothes, switching out his ‘emergency pair’ for faded cotton pants and a too big black t-shirt that was most certainly Archie’s and not one of the countless Jughead had left lying around and stuffed into the backs of dresser drawers. Dry and clothed again, for the second time in one night, he turned to the redhead and grinned at the sleepy sight that greeted him. He raised open arms and called to him softly, “Come ‘ere Archie.” 

The taller boy folded into him easily enough and Jughead guided him towards his bed, laid him back against it and settled him on the pillows with a blanket pulled over him. He went to stand and a whimper graced his ears making him press a chaste kiss to Archie’s brow and gaze down at him with fondness. “I’ll be right back, Archie. Last time, I promise.” He wasn’t happy about it, if the pout was anything to go by, but he nodded all the same and released the hold of his hands curled into Jughead’s shirt. The darker boy rewarded him with a chaste kiss before he stood.

He had one last job to do, one last act to keep his Cherished safe, and he set himself to it without distraction. He gathered the clothes they had shed mere moments ago and slipped out the door, pausing in the hallway only long enough to hear Fred Andrews’ sleeping breaths ringing steady and deep, marking as resting him in sleep’s embrace, before he continued on, down the stairs with careful steps. He gathered up the bag he’d dropped by the kitchen door, flicking the lock as he did so with a subconscious thought of providing safety, then he carried it all to the laundry room off the kitchen. He peered into the washing machine and was relieved to see only a few articles of clothing laying at the bottom. He dropped their rain-soaked clothes in, then opened the bag and laid the clothes previously covered in blood in after them. He added more cleaner than he needed to, enough stain remover that he could practically see Alice Cooper and all her ‘perfect-suburban-wife-and-mom’ nonsense shaking her head at him. He set them to wash at the heaviest setting he could and thanked the heavens that Fred Andrews had opted for a sturdy and silent machine when he’d bought the thing years ago. He buries the used trash bag as far down as he can in the kitchen trash before scrubbing even the thought of it and the clothes it had held from his hands in the sink. 

He stops then, looks around the space, sees the doors shut and locked, the kitchen kept tidy, nothing out of place, nothing suspicious. He sees their shoes through the window, the already clean pieces set out deliberately on the steps where they will seem normal, where the rain can pelt down on them and wash away whatever might remain. He sees everything and he knows there is nothing here that can hurt his Cherished One anymore. His only duty now is to give comfort to a boy broken by cruelty even their dark hearts would never have dreamt. It’s a role he’s always welcomed easily, and though he can feel the edges of dread at the difficulties to come, it is for Archie’s sake and not his own, he’s never known a reality where taking care of his best friend was not the focus of his existence, does not want to know a reality where life had no meaning, no color, no reason for existence.

He’s back in Archie’s room before he’s aware of it, and he can’t help but smile at the sight of his wild fire curled up on his side, so very tired but keeping his eyes open, keeping himself awake and watching the door for Jughead’s return. He shuts the door behind him, hears it latch quietly and pays it no further mind. 

“Jug…” It’s quiet, almost a plea as it reaches his ears. He answers it with a smile as he crosses the space between them with a quiet “Hey Baby.” and slips beneath the blankets. He lays back against the pillows, pulls the blankets over his legs and reaches for Archie, tangles him in his arms and draws him close. The redhead came without protest and curled into his side with relief. He lays his head across Jughead’s shoulder and chest as he’s bade, pale fingers carding through red hair and caressing his scalp as storm colored eyes finally beginning to show the traces of tiredness gaze down at him.

Jughead felt it when Archie stiffened, would be lying if he said he hadn’t considered a panic attack or relapse or another breakdown as a possibility, would be lying if he said he hadn’t been prepared for it. He doesn’t do anything, waits to see what the other boy will do. Merely holds him and settles pale fingers in flame-colored hair with constant, even pressure.

Archie looked up at him suddenly, face pale and eyes wide, his lips already parted. Jughead doesn’t know what to expect from him, doesn’t know what he’s going to say, but he’s not surprised by the shaky, breathless exhale of “ _Reggie._ ”

He smiles gently and runs previously still fingers through drying red locks. He’s almost surprised it had taken this long for that thought, that realization to filter through Archie’s abused and hurting mind. “I took care of it. You don’t need to worry about it.” 

It’s soft, whispered into the space between them with ethereal calm. Archie’s eyes soften back into tiredness almost immediately, the tension draining from his body. It’s done. He need not think nor speak of it again, and that’s a relief to him. Jughead understands. Understands the emotions that have boiled in his core every time Reggie ladled out hatred and violence against a raven-haired boy. He understands the feeling of it boiling over, of anger turning to fury, and fury turning to unholy wrath rained down in retribution turned to vengeance. Archie doesn’t have to explain that, knows that Jughead understands, sees all of it, past and present, where it sits under his skin. Knows the same sits stirring restlessly in Jughead’s heart, the tendrils of it beginning to reach out, spreading under pale, mole dotted skin, becoming an itch, becoming a compulsion, a need. He knows this as Jughead knows him, in the same manner that he knows that he need not worry nor fear the discovery of Reggie’s body. His Beloved took care of it, took care of him, just as he always did.

He settles again, everything else erased in the face of exhaustion and love turned to devotion, lays his head down on pale skin stretched over sharp bones and sighs like it’s the most comfortable place he’s ever been. To him, it is. 

Archie sleeps soundly that night, the toll of everything coming to demand he pay the due for his emotions, for his worship, for his breaking, for his healing. He sleeps without care, without tossing or turning, without nightmares of phantom hands and whispered honey slick words. Sleeps in the knowledge and feeling of safety, encompassed by a raven boy’s arms, watched over by storm color eyes flecked with stardust collected from the cosmos. 

Jughead watches over him for a time, waits to see if he will wake, if he will become trapped in his sleep, if nightmares and memories one and the same will plague him this night. They don’t, but Jughead knows they will. He knows the days ahead will be filled with pain, with shame that shouldn’t exist and revulsion at the touch of hands on his skin, even if they’re pale and flecked with moles rather than thin and delicate like a china doll. He knows the damage a monster calling herself a ‘woman’ and a ‘teacher’ has wrought will make itself known, knowns that the weeks and months of poison that have been force-fed to his wild thing sits idle in his gut, wrapped like a vine around his core and soul, knows it will surge up to choke the boy in his arms, to fill him and destroy him from the inside out once again. He knows these beasts called trauma, PTSD, anxiety, and so many more will rear their ugly heads, that he will have to face them, will have to help Archie face them. He knows the days and nights will come where even his touch, once and still a perfect fit against Archie’s jagged edges, will be unbearable. He knows this, knows all of it, and he’s prepared to face it, willing to stare down these demons and countless others for the sake of his Cherished One. Again and again until hopefully, eventually, he healed.

But not tonight. Tonight the demons and monsters sleep, allow Archie to rest. Eventually Jughead drifts off as well, unable to watch forever, slips away into sleep with the knowledge that Archie is safe and in his arms, that he’ll never be at the mercy of that **_thing_** again.

-

They go to school the next day as if everything were normal, and in a way it was. Fred Andrews hadn’t batted an eye at the sight of Jughead Jones in his kitchen the next morning, walking down the steps with Archie after a night of rest, doesn’t comment at the bruising on his neck. He slips away while they eat, Jughead hovering just a bit too close to Archie to be normal but unnoticeable to the observer because they had always been this way, ever since they were children. Fred comes back with a tube of concealer in hand, shrugs and hands it to him, says “I remember not wanting to answer questions about wayward bruises, and Mary left this last time she was here.”

He doesn’t say any more as Jughead slips away to apply the cream to his neck and jaw, but the way he looks at him makes Jughead wonder just what type of bruises he used to wear. The knowing in his eyes makes Jughead wonder just how much aged amber-turned-brown eyes see, the recognition of something or someone that isn’t there makes him wonder just who the ghost standing in his place is. 

The concealer isn’t the right color, but it blends out easily enough, and it covers the marks pressed into his skin. Concern and relief war in Archie’s eyes when he sees that, and Jughead knows that true relief will only come when the foreign marks of an unworthy boy fade from his skin. 

They walk to school, separate at the doors and attend their classes, everything as normal. Jughead makes sure Archie is never alone, never vulnerable to be whisked away by ash colored hair and papery skin stretched over rotten bones, and he sees the surprise, the discontent his presence breeds in her. It makes dark satisfaction bloom in his chest. Betty and Kevin and the new girl who didn’t fit but refused to acknowledge that fact notice his presence, comment on it, but his surely, guarded gaze and sardonic comments matched the story of Archie’s eye roll and golden boy routine of ‘don’t leave old friends alone’ and it smooths their ruffled feathers easily enough. It takes the gentle press of tan fingers into his thigh to keep his own ruffled feathers from springing forth for all to see as the dark-haired girl continues to speak, to annoy him. He settles though, his hackles falling and the snarl lowering to a silent rumble in his chest, decides she isn’t worth his time nor effort, knows someone else already holds that place. He misses the warmth of pressing fingers when Archie moves his hand away though, but he understands the appearances they have to keep.

It’s normal, uneventful, unworthy of drawing attention. Only a few jocks, lost without their leader, ask after Reggie.

-

Reggie’s body was discovered three days later. The heavy rains and animal activity made forensic analysis all but useless, much to the vocal annoyance of Sheriff Keller that obvious spread through town like wildfire because, hey, small old-fashioned towns. With nothing else, not even a missing person’s report from his father to go on, Sheriff Keller was forced to rely on only the autopsy. Dr. Curdle Jr. rather callously declared the marks to be the remnants of bear claws that had torn through thin flesh and split open the jugular, trachea, and esophagus, leading the boy to bleed out in a manner of minutes. Jughead couldn’t fault him, he wasn’t entirely wrong, even if things hadn’t happened quite in that order.

Reggie Mantle’s death was ruled an animal attack two days later and the local PD and mayor cover their asses by warning the kids to stay out of the woods and not to stray too close to the thickets.

They don’t say anything, but the searing kiss pressed to Jughead’s lips in Archie’s room with the curtains carefully drawn screams with devotion, with thanks, with worship. It tastes like the copper and iron of blood spilled out in retribution to shower Archie in unholy baptism. Everything he returns in that kiss, in hands gripping desperately at flame-colored strands but not daring to push any farther yet, in the press of his body to Archie’s is a thanks given for the devotion laid at his feet.

-

Jughead isn’t as blunt nor spontaneous as Archie, bides his time planning rather than forcing down his anger and ignoring it. He’s far more subtle in his actions, deliberate where Archie was impulsive, creative where Archie had only the raw force of hand turned to claws and emotions spiraled out of control. 

Two weeks after the officially unrelated deaths of Reggie Mantle and Jason Blossom, Geraldine Grundy, real name Jennifer Gibson, is found a town over in a small furnished apartment paid for with her own money and false identification. Her body is laid out without particular care on the imitation Persian rug as if she had been left where she fell. Her throat is slit, or rather pried open, by the line of cord taken from the cello resting in its stand, the length now dropped bloody at her side. Whether she bled out or choked to death as it was tightened around her throat is unclear. Dropped without fingerprints or trace evidence of any kind is her real identification as well as her false one, they lay in a puddle of her own blood, holders open with her poisonous, smiling face upturned, protected beneath plastic for whomever looked down to see. Nothing in the apartment shows signs of habitation, not even her own, it seems as if she rented the space and died before she was able to use it. Nothing personal is found besides a few sheets of music and the cello she had brought with her now stood in its stand and missing the string that had demanded blood from a sugar-coated poisonous throat like music that rivaled the heaven’s choirs.

The police find no evidence; no fingerprints, no hairs, no security camera recordings, no fibers or specks that do not belong to the apartment rented by Gibson turned Grundy. They do find the pending arrest record for the repeated sexual assault of a minor, and the alleged abuses of three other teen boys, in Jennifer Gibson’s file and the death certificate, due to natural causes and old age, of Geraldine Grundy. The police do their jobs but there is nothing to find, and very few people seem to care about the fate of a child predator outside of the drama it created.

They’re laid in bed when the news reaches them through the combination of the media and the text chatter their ‘friends’ have become caught up in as it sweeps the town. Archie turns to stare at him with wide eyes from where he’s leaned against a pale chest and Jughead looks back at him with storm colored eyes strangely calm in the wake of raging tempests that have not left their depths since the night Archie had bared the pain of his soul and put into words the poison stuck to his veins. 

“Jug?” It’s soft, timid in a way Archie almost never was with him unless it was in the aftermath of their more volatile joinings. It was marred now by an uncertainty that never appeared even after their harshest meetings, after passions ran into bloodlust and love ran into the need to claim. Jughead only smiled and nodded his head, whispering “Yeah Arch.” in a soft tone as he leaned forward to press a careful kiss to red hair.

The boy who knew his soul needed no other answer, no more a reassurance, did not question for a moment the wisdom of unholy wrath reigning down unto an unworthy monster for the crimes against the one who worshiped him in devotion. He pressed up into the boy who held him, scrabbled to straddle him instead of laying by his side, hands searching desperately for perches against shirt and skin alike, fevered lips pressing to pale pink in desperation as he burned from the inside out. Kissed his raven boy with the heat of the fires burning through him with the weight of all the things he could not twist into words; gratitude, love, thanks, awe, devotion and things wild and deep that he could not name, that no word could encompass. He pressed them into pale skin, down deeper into the kindred soul of his Beloved bound to his own in threads of red.

Jughead met him easily with a laugh, welcomed him into his arms, greeted his Cherished One as his soul sang, as Archie’s cried out in that same song to answer. He held him close and welcomed his fire, returned the burning under his flame-colored love’s skin with the weight of the cosmos flecked in stardust, kissed him until they suffocated, until their lungs wilted and stirred to life again under the flames of their passion and demanded air. They broke apart and Archie’s hands were buried in dark hair, his forehead pressed to Jughead’s as they panted for breath, for the air that never filled them the way their vicious devotion did. Jughead gazes up at this broken boy made unholy and holy in tandem, sees the jagged edges and splintered pieces of him, sees the gouges where he would mend, the cracks where he would have to break apart again before he could heal, see all of his body and soul and loves him with a passion that he feels could destroy his very soul. He would welcome it if it did. 

Archie looks back at him, seems the strength of him, the storms and ocean tempests crashing together in his eyes, the galaxies merging to scatter stardust across his gaze, sees those eyes shifting color only for him, knows they turn to slate and crumbling stone when they look on anyone else. Sees the icy winds stirring into whirlwinds in his chest, and fires burning deeper down shooting sparks through his being, chasing cold with flames that only reach for him, reach to caress his very being, would burn the rest of the world to ash. Would lay waste and rend reality in two. Sees the soul of him bound only by red that reaches across a space that will never be small enough to meet his own. His love gazes back at him and sees his Beloved return the devotion that would rend kingdoms to dust returned a thousand-fold, sees faith return to Archie’s eyes with the knowledge that his Beloved would scatter the cosmos and turn reality to ash and dust for him.

Archie settles in the only place he has ever felt safe outside his father’s arms, and Jughead reaches for him, settles his little burning wild thing on his chest, tucks teeth that will never be bared to him at his throat and welcomes him, body and soul, home. A Cherished One rests in his Beloved’s arms and knows from the burning of devotion in his soul, from the all-encompassing weight of love surrounding him that he is safe.

**Author's Note:**

> Twenty-Eight STAB WOUNDS. 
> 
> You know that ^ meme? Yeah, reads these next words in that form: Thirty-Four PAGES. 34. Thirty-Four. Thirty-Four pages and two (bullshit past me - THREE) days of nothing but writing and editing later this was NOT what I had planned (two series, an otp fic, a second otp fic, a debut into stranger things) Anywhere on this list do you see murder, deranged soul bonds, trauma, angst, fluff, and murder-love? Well maybe you do, but THIS wasn’t in the PLAN! I just described the process of everything I’ve ever written…this is the longest thing I’ve ever done…This is longer than the rough draft that I’ve had finished for a year and have never published because I die every time I try to edit it! 
> 
> WHOOOOoooooOOOOOoooooOOOOO!!!!! 
> 
> Hope ya enjoyed it ya lil shits (ahem, lovely darlings <3)!
> 
> I hope you enjoy it, if you want to leave a kudos it will make my day, if you want to leave a comment I'll probably melt from happiness. I very much enjoy talking with the people who comment <3 :D


End file.
